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diff --git a/35617-h/35617-h.htm b/35617-h/35617-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd66216 --- /dev/null +++ b/35617-h/35617-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4873 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Terror, by Arthur Machen</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Terror, by Arthur Machen</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Terror<br /> + A Mystery</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Arthur Machen</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 20, 2011 [eBook #35617]<br /> +[Most recently updated: December 16, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Dave Haren and Marc D’Hooghe</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TERROR ***</div> + +<h1>THE TERROR</h1> + +<h4><i>A MYSTERY</i></h4> + +<h2 class="no-break">BY ARTHUR MACHEN</h2> + +<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE BOWMEN"</h4> + +<h5>NEW YORK</h5> + +<h5>ROBERT M. MCBRIDE & COMPANY</h5> + +<h5>UNION SQUARE, NORTH</h5> + +<h5>1917</h5> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. The Coming of the Terror</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. Death in the Village</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. The Doctor’s Theory</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. The Spread of the Terror</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. The Incident of the Unknown Tree</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. Mr. Remnant’s Z Ray</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. The Case of the Hidden Germans</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. What Mr. Merritt Found</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. The Light on the Water</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. The Child and the Moth</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. At Treff Loyne Farm</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. The Letter of Wrath</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. The Last Words of Mr. Secretan</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. The End of the Terror</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br/> +The Coming of the Terror</h2> + +<p> +After two years we are turning once more to the morning’s news with a sense of +appetite and glad expectation. There were thrills at the beginning of the war; +the thrill of horror and of a doom that seemed at once incredible and certain; +this was when Namur fell and the German host swelled like a flood over the +French fields, and drew very near to the walls of Paris. Then we felt the +thrill of exultation when the good news came that the awful tide had been +turned back, that Paris and the world were safe; for awhile at all events. +</p> + +<p> +Then for days we hoped for more news as good as this or better. Has Von Kluck +been surrounded? Not to-day, but perhaps he will be surrounded to-morrow. But +the days became weeks, the weeks drew out to months; the battle in the West +seemed frozen. Now and again things were done that seemed hopeful, with promise +of events still better. But Neuve Chapelle and Loos dwindled into +disappointments as their tale was told fully; the lines in the West remained, +for all practical purposes of victory, immobile. Nothing seemed to happen; +there was nothing to read save the record of operations that were clearly +trifling and insignificant. People speculated as to the reason of this +inaction; the hopeful said that Joffre had a plan, that he was “nibbling,” +others declared that we were short of munitions, others again that the new +levies were not yet ripe for battle. So the months went by, and almost two +years of war had been completed before the motionless English line began to +stir and quiver as if it awoke from a long sleep, and began to roll onward, +overwhelming the enemy. +</p> + +<p> +The secret of the long inaction of the British Armies has been well kept. On +the one hand it was rigorously protected by the censorship, which severe, and +sometimes severe to the point of absurdity—“the captains and the ... +depart,” for instance—became in this particular matter ferocious. As soon +as the real significance of that which was happening, or beginning to happen, +was perceived by the authorities, an underlined circular was issued to the +newspaper proprietors of Great Britain and Ireland. It warned each proprietor +that he might impart the contents of this circular to one other person only, +such person being the responsible editor of his paper, who was to keep the +communication secret under the severest penalties. The circular forbade any +mention of certain events that had taken place, that might take place; it +forbade any kind of allusion to these events or any hint of their existence, or +of the possibility of their existence, not only in the Press, but in any form +whatever. The subject was not to be alluded to in conversation, it was not to +be hinted at, however obscurely, in letters; the very existence of the +circular, its subject apart, was to be a dead secret. +</p> + +<p> +These measures were successful. A wealthy newspaper proprietor of the North, +warmed a little at the end of the Throwsters’ Feast (which was held as usual, +it will be remembered), ventured to say to the man next to him: “How awful it +would be, wouldn’t it, if....” His words were repeated, as proof, one regrets +to say, that it was time for “old Arnold” to “pull himself together”; and he +was fined a thousand pounds. Then, there was the case of an obscure weekly +paper published in the county town of an agricultural district in Wales. The +<i>Meiros Observer</i> (we will call it) was issued from a stationer’s back +premises, and filled its four pages with accounts of local flower shows, fancy +fairs at vicarages, reports of parish councils, and rare bathing fatalities. It +also issued a visitors’ list, which has been known to contain six names. +</p> + +<p> +This enlightened organ printed a paragraph, which nobody noticed, which was +very like paragraphs that small country newspapers have long been in the habit +of printing, which could hardly give so much as a hint to any one—to any +one, that is, who was not fully instructed in the secret. As a matter of fact, +this piece of intelligence got into the paper because the proprietor, who was +also the editor, incautiously left the last processes of this particular issue +to the staff, who was the Lord-High-Everything-Else of the establishment; and +the staff put in a bit of gossip he had heard in the market to fill up two +inches on the back page. But the result was that the <i>Meiros Observer</i> +ceased to appear, owing to “untoward circumstances” as the proprietor said; and +he would say no more. No more, that is, by way of explanation, but a great deal +more by way of execration of “damned, prying busybodies.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Now a censorship that is sufficiently minute and utterly remorseless can do +amazing things in the way of hiding ... what it wants to hide. Before the war, +one would have thought otherwise; one would have said that, censor or no +censor, the fact of the murder at X or the fact of the bank robbery at Y would +certainly become known; if not through the Press, at all events through rumor +and the passage of the news from mouth to mouth. And this would be +true—of England three hundred years ago, and of savage tribelands of +to-day. But we have grown of late to such a reverence for the printed word and +such a reliance on it, that the old faculty of disseminating news by word of +mouth has become atrophied. Forbid the Press to mention the fact that Jones has +been murdered, and it is marvelous how few people will hear of it, and of those +who hear how few will credit the story that they have heard. You meet a man in +the train who remarks that he has been told something about a murder in +Southwark; there is all the difference in the world between the impression you +receive from such a chance communication and that given by half a dozen lines +of print with name, and street and date and all the facts of the case. People +in trains repeat all sorts of tales, many of them false; newspapers do not +print accounts of murders that have not been committed. +</p> + +<p> +Then another consideration that has made for secrecy. I may have seemed to say +that the old office of rumor no longer exists; I shall be reminded of the +strange legend of “the Russians” and the mythology of the “Angels of Mons.” But +let me point out, in the first place, that both these absurdities depended on +the papers for their wide dissemination. If there had been no newspapers or +magazines Russians and Angels would have made but a brief, vague appearance of +the most shadowy kind—a few would have heard of them, fewer still would +have believed in them, they would have been gossiped about for a bare week or +two, and so they would have vanished away. +</p> + +<p> +And, then, again, the very fact of these vain rumors and fantastic tales having +been so widely believed for a time was fatal to the credit of any stray +mutterings that may have got abroad. People had been taken in twice; they had +seen how grave persons, men of credit, had preached and lectured about the +shining forms that had saved the British Army at Mons, or had testified to the +trains, packed with gray-coated Muscovites, rushing through the land at dead of +night: and now there was a hint of something more amazing than either of the +discredited legends. But this time there was no word of confirmation to be +found in daily paper, or weekly review, or parish magazine, and so the few that +heard either laughed, or, being serious, went home and jotted down notes for +essays on “War-time Psychology: Collective Delusions.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I followed neither of these courses. For before the secret circular had been +issued my curiosity had somehow been aroused by certain paragraphs concerning a +“Fatal Accident to Well-known Airman.” The propeller of the airplane had been +shattered, apparently by a collision with a flight of pigeons; the blades had +been broken and the machine had fallen like lead to the earth. And soon after I +had seen this account, I heard of some very odd circumstances relating to an +explosion in a great munition factory in the Midlands. I thought I saw the +possibility of a connection between two very different events. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It has been pointed out to me by friends who have been good enough to read this +record, that certain phrases I have used may give the impression that I ascribe +all the delays of the war on the Western front to the extraordinary +circumstances which occasioned the issue of the Secret Circular. Of course this +is not the case, there were many reasons for the immobility of our lines from +October 1914 to July 1916. These causes have been evident enough and have been +openly discussed and deplored. But behind them was something of infinitely +greater moment. We lacked men, but men were pouring into the new army; we were +short of shells, but when the shortage was proclaimed the nation set itself to +mend this matter with all its energy. We could undertake to supply the defects +of our army both in men and munitions—<i>if</i> the new and incredible +danger could be overcome. It has been overcome; rather, perhaps, it has ceased +to exist; and the secret may now be told. +</p> + +<p> +I have said my attention was attracted by an account of the death of a +well-known airman. I have not the habit of preserving cuttings, I am sorry to +say, so that I cannot be precise as to the date of this event. To the best of +my belief it was either towards the end of May or the beginning of June 1915. +The newspaper paragraph announcing the death of Flight-Lieutenant +Western-Reynolds was brief enough; accidents, and fatal accidents, to the men +who are storming the air for us are, unfortunately, by no means so rare as to +demand an elaborated notice. But the manner in which Western-Reynolds met his +death struck me as extraordinary, inasmuch as it revealed a new danger in the +element that we have lately conquered. He was brought down, as I said, by a +flight of birds; of pigeons, as appeared by what was found on the bloodstained +and shattered blades of the propeller. An eye-witness of the accident, a +fellow-officer, described how Western-Reynolds set out from the aerodrome on a +fine afternoon, there being hardly any wind. He was going to France; he had +made the journey to and fro half a dozen times or more, and felt perfectly +secure and at ease. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Wester’ rose to a great height at once, and we could scarcely see the +machine. I was turning to go when one of the fellows called out, ‘I say! What’s +this?’ He pointed up, and we saw what looked like a black cloud coming from the +south at a tremendous rate. I saw at once it wasn’t a cloud; it came with a +swirl and a rush quite different from any cloud I’ve ever seen. But for a +second I couldn’t make out exactly what it was. It altered its shape and turned +into a great crescent, and wheeled and veered about as if it was looking for +something. The man who had called out had got his glasses, and was staring for +all he was worth. Then he shouted that it was a tremendous flight of birds, +‘thousands of them.’ They went on wheeling and beating about high up in the +air, and we were watching them, thinking it was interesting, but not supposing +that they would make any difference to ‘Wester,’ who was just about out of +sight. His machine was just a speck. Then the two arms of the crescent drew in +as quick as lightning, and these thousands of birds shot in a solid mass right +up there across the sky, and flew away somewhere about nor’-nor’-by-west. Then +Henley, the man with the glasses, called out, ‘He’s down!’ and started running, +and I went after him. We got a car and as we were going along Henley told me +that he’d seen the machine drop dead, as if it came out of that cloud of birds. +He thought then that they must have mucked up the propeller somehow. That +turned out to be the case. We found the propeller blades all broken and covered +with blood and pigeon feathers, and carcasses of the birds had got wedged in +between the blades, and were sticking to them.” +</p> + +<p> +This was the story that the young airman told one evening in a small company. +He did not speak “in confidence,” so I have no hesitation in reproducing what +he said. Naturally, I did not take a verbatim note of his conversation, but I +have something of a knack of remembering talk that interests me, and I think my +reproduction is very near to the tale that I heard. And let it be noted that +the flying man told his story without any sense or indication of a sense that +the incredible, or all but the incredible, had happened. So far as he knew, he +said, it was the first accident of the kind. Airmen in France had been bothered +once or twice by birds—he thought they were eagles—flying viciously +at them, but poor old “Wester” had been the first man to come up against a +flight of some thousands of pigeons. +</p> + +<p> +“And perhaps I shall be the next,” he added, “but why look for trouble? Anyhow, +I’m going to see <i>Toodle-oo</i> to-morrow afternoon.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, I heard the story, as one hears all the varied marvels and terrors of the +air; as one heard some years ago of “air pockets,” strange gulfs or voids in +the atmosphere into which airmen fell with great peril; or as one heard of the +experience of the airman who flew over the Cumberland mountains in the burning +summer of 1911, and as he swam far above the heights was suddenly and +vehemently blown upwards, the hot air from the rocks striking his plane as if +it had been a blast from a furnace chimney. We have just begun to navigate a +strange region; we must expect to encounter strange adventures, strange perils. +And here a new chapter in the chronicles of these perils and adventures had +been opened by the death of Western-Reynolds; and no doubt invention and +contrivance would presently hit on some way of countering the new danger. +</p> + +<p> +It was, I think, about a week or ten days after the airman’s death that my +business called me to a northern town, the name of which, perhaps, had better +remain unknown. My mission was to inquire into certain charges of extravagance +which had been laid against the working people, that is, the munition workers +of this especial town. It was said that the men who used to earn £2 10s. a week +were now getting from seven to eight pounds, that “bits of girls” were being +paid two pounds instead of seven or eight shillings, and that, in consequence, +there was an orgy of foolish extravagance. The girls, I was told, were eating +chocolates at four, five, and six shillings a pound, the women were ordering +thirty-pound pianos which they couldn’t play, and the men bought gold chains at +ten and twenty guineas apiece. +</p> + +<p> +I dived into the town in question and found, as usual, that there was a mixture +of truth and exaggeration in the stories that I had heard. Gramophones, for +example: they cannot be called in strictness necessaries, but they were +undoubtedly finding a ready sale, even in the more expensive brands. And I +thought that there were a great many very spick and span perambulators to be +seen on the pavement; smart perambulators, painted in tender shades of color +and expensively fitted. +</p> + +<p> +“And how can you be surprised if people will have a bit of a fling?” a worker +said to me. “We’re seeing money for the first time in our lives, and it’s +bright. And we work hard for it, and we risk our lives to get it. You’ve heard +of explosion yonder?” +</p> + +<p> +He mentioned certain works on the outskirts of the town. Of course, neither the +name of the works nor of the town had been printed; there had been a brief +notice of “Explosion at Munition Works in the Northern District: Many +Fatalities.” The working man told me about it, and added some dreadful details. +</p> + +<p> +“They wouldn’t let their folks see bodies; screwed them up in coffins as they +found them in shop. The gas had done it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Turned their faces black, you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay. They were all as if they had been bitten to pieces.” +</p> + +<p> +This was a strange gas. +</p> + +<p> +I asked the man in the northern town all sorts of questions about the +extraordinary explosion of which he had spoken to me. But he had very little +more to say. As I have noted already, secrets that may not be printed are often +deeply kept; last summer there were very few people outside high official +circles who knew anything about the “Tanks,” of which we have all been talking +lately, though these strange instruments of war were being exercised and tested +in a park not far from London. So the man who told me of the explosion in the +munition factory was most likely genuine in his profession that he knew nothing +more of the disaster. I found out that he was a smelter employed at a furnace +on the other side of the town to the ruined factory; he didn’t know even what +they had been making there; some very dangerous high explosive, he supposed. +His information was really nothing more than a bit of gruesome gossip, which he +had heard probably at third or fourth or fifth hand. The horrible detail of +faces “as if they had been bitten to pieces” had made its violent impression on +him, that was all. +</p> + +<p> +I gave him up and took a tram to the district of the disaster; a sort of +industrial suburb, five miles from the center of the town. When I asked for the +factory, I was told that it was no good my going to it as there was nobody +there. But I found it; a raw and hideous shed with a walled yard about it, and +a shut gate. I looked for signs of destruction, but there was nothing. The roof +was quite undamaged; and again it struck me that this had been a strange +accident. There had been an explosion of sufficient violence to kill workpeople +in the building, but the building itself showed no wounds or scars. +</p> + +<p> +A man came out of the gate and locked it behind him. I began to ask him some +sort of question, or rather, I began to “open” for a question with “A terrible +business here, they tell me,” or some such phrase of convention. I got no +farther. The man asked me if I saw a policeman walking down the street. I said +I did, and I was given the choice of getting about my business forthwith or of +being instantly given in charge as a spy. “Th’ast better be gone and quick +about it,” was, I think, his final advice, and I took it. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I had come literally up against a brick wall. Thinking the problem over, +I could only suppose that the smelter or his informant had twisted the phrases +of the story. The smelter had said the dead men’s faces were “bitten to +pieces”; this might be an unconscious perversion of “eaten away.” That phrase +might describe well enough the effect of strong acids, and, for all I knew of +the processes of munition-making, such acids might be used and might explode +with horrible results in some perilous stage of their admixture. +</p> + +<p> +It was a day or two later that the accident to the airman, Western-Reynolds, +came into my mind. For one of those instants which are far shorter than any +measure of time there flashed out the possibility of a link between the two +disasters. But here was a wild impossibility, and I drove it away. And yet I +think that the thought, mad as it seemed, never left me; it was the secret +light that at last guided me through a somber grove of enigmas. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It was about this time, so far as the date can be fixed, that a whole district, +one might say a whole county, was visited by a series of extraordinary and +terrible calamities, which were the more terrible inasmuch as they continued +for some time to be inscrutable mysteries. It is, indeed, doubtful whether +these awful events do not still remain mysteries to many of those concerned; +for before the inhabitants of this part of the country had time to join one +link of evidence to another the circular was issued, and thenceforth no one +knew how to distinguish undoubted fact from wild and extravagant surmise. +</p> + +<p> +The district in question is in the far west of Wales; I shall call it, for +convenience, Meirion. In it there is one seaside town of some repute with +holiday-makers for five or six weeks in the summer, and dotted about the county +there are three or four small old towns that seem drooping in a slow decay, +sleepy and gray with age and forgetfulness. They remind me of what I have read +of towns in the west of Ireland. Grass grows between the uneven stones of the +pavements, the signs above the shop windows decline, half the letters of these +signs are missing, here and there a house has been pulled down, or has been +allowed to slide into ruin, and wild greenery springs up through the fallen +stones, and there is silence in all the streets. And, it is to be noted, these +are not places that were once magnificent. The Celts have never had the art of +building, and so far as I can see, such towns as Towy and Merthyr Tegveth and +Meiros must have been always much as they are now, clusters of poorish, +meanly-built houses, ill-kept and down at heel. +</p> + +<p> +And these few towns are thinly scattered over a wild country where north is +divided from south by a wilder mountain range. One of these places is sixteen +miles from any station; the others are doubtfully and deviously connected by +single-line railways served by rare trains that pause and stagger and hesitate +on their slow journey up mountain passes, or stop for half an hour or more at +lonely sheds called stations, situated in the midst of desolate marshes. A few +years ago I traveled with an Irishman on one of these queer lines, and he +looked to right and saw the bog with its yellow and blue grasses and stagnant +pools, and he looked to left and saw a ragged hillside, set with gray stone +walls. “I can hardly believe,” he said, “that I’m not still in the wilds of +Ireland.” +</p> + +<p> +Here, then, one sees a wild and divided and scattered region a land of outland +hills and secret and hidden valleys. I know white farms on this coast which +must be separate by two hours of hard, rough walking from any other habitation, +which are invisible from any other house. And inland, again, the farms are +often ringed about by thick groves of ash, planted by men of old days to +shelter their roof-trees from rude winds of the mountain and stormy winds of +the sea; so that these places, too, are hidden away, to be surmised only by the +wood smoke that rises from the green surrounding leaves. A Londoner must see +them to believe in them; and even then he can scarcely credit their utter +isolation. +</p> + +<p> +Such, then in the main is Meirion, and on this land in the early summer of last +year terror descended—a terror without shape, such as no man there had +ever known. +</p> + +<p> +It began with the tale of a little child who wandered out into the lanes to +pick flowers one sunny afternoon, and never came back to the cottage on the +hill. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br/> +Death in the Village</h2> + +<p> +The child who was lost came from a lonely cottage that stands on the slope of a +steep hillside called the Allt, or the height. The land about it is wild and +ragged; here the growth of gorse and bracken, here a marshy hollow of reeds and +rushes, marking the course of the stream from some hidden well, here thickets +of dense and tangled undergrowth, the outposts of the wood. Down through this +broken and uneven ground a path leads to the lane at the bottom of the valley; +then the land rises again and swells up to the cliffs over the sea, about a +quarter of a mile away. The little girl, Gertrude Morgan, asked her mother if +she might go down to the lane and pick the purple flowers—these were +orchids—that grew there, and her mother gave her leave, telling her she +must be sure to be back by tea-time, as there was apple-tart for tea. +</p> + +<p> +She never came back. It was supposed that she must have crossed the road and +gone to the cliff’s edge, possibly in order to pick the sea-pinks that were +then in full blossom. She must have slipped, they said, and fallen into the +sea, two hundred feet below. And, it may be said at once, that there was no +doubt some truth in this conjecture, though it stopped very far short of the +whole truth. The child’s body must have been carried out by the tide, for it +was never found. +</p> + +<p> +The conjecture of a false step or of a fatal slide on the slippery turf that +slopes down to the rocks was accepted as being the only explanation possible. +People thought the accident a strange one because, as a rule, country children +living by the cliffs and the sea become wary at an early age, and Gertrude +Morgan was almost ten years old. Still, as the neighbors said, “that’s how it +must have happened, and it’s a great pity, to be sure.” But this would not do +when in a week’s time a strong young laborer failed to come to his cottage +after the day’s work. His body was found on the rocks six or seven miles from +the cliffs where the child was supposed to have fallen; he was going home by a +path that he had used every night of his life for eight or nine years, that he +used of dark nights in perfect security, knowing every inch of it. The police +asked if he drank, but he was a teetotaler; if he were subject to fits, but he +wasn’t. And he was not murdered for his wealth, since agricultural laborers are +not wealthy. It was only possible again to talk of slippery turf and a false +step; but people began to be frightened. Then a woman was found with her neck +broken at the bottom of a disused quarry near Llanfihangel, in the middle of +the county. The “false step” theory was eliminated here, for the quarry was +guarded with a natural hedge of gorse bushes. One would have to struggle and +fight through sharp thorns to destruction in such a place as this; and indeed +the gorse bushes were broken as if some one had rushed furiously through them, +just above the place where the woman’s body was found. And this was strange: +there was a dead sheep lying beside her in the pit, as if the woman and the +sheep together had been chased over the brim of the quarry. But chased by whom, +or by what? And then there was a new form of terror. +</p> + +<p> +This was in the region of the marshes under the mountain. A man and his son, a +lad of fourteen or fifteen, set out early one morning to work and never reached +the farm where they were bound. Their way skirted the marsh, but it was broad, +firm and well metalled, and it had been raised about two feet above the bog. +But when search was made in the evening of the same day Phillips and his son +were found dead in the marsh, covered with black slime and pondweed. And they +lay some ten yards from the path, which, it would seem, they must have left +deliberately. It was useless of course, to look for tracks in the black ooze, +for if one threw a big stone into it a few seconds removed all marks of the +disturbance. The men who found the two bodies beat about the verges and +purlieus of the marsh in hope of finding some trace of the murderers; they went +to and fro over the rising ground where the black cattle were grazing, they +searched the alder thickets by the brook; but they discovered nothing. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Most horrible of all these horrors, perhaps, was the affair of the Highway, a +lonely and unfrequented by-road that winds for many miles on high and lonely +land. Here, a mile from any other dwelling, stands a cottage on the edge of a +dark wood. It was inhabited by a laborer named Williams, his wife, and their +three children. One hot summer’s evening, a man who had been doing a day’s +gardening at a rectory three or four miles away, passed the cottage, and +stopped for a few minutes to chat with Williams, the laborer, who was pottering +about his garden, while the children were playing on the path by the door. The +two talked of their neighbors and of the potatoes till Mrs. Williams appeared +at the doorway and said supper was ready, and Williams turned to go into the +house. This was about eight o’clock, and in the ordinary course the family +would have their supper and be in bed by nine, or by half-past nine at latest. +At ten o’clock that night the local doctor was driving home along the Highway. +His horse shied violently and then stopped dead just opposite the gate to the +cottage. The doctor got down, frightened at what he saw; and there on the +roadway lay Williams, his wife, and the three children, stone dead, all of +them. Their skulls were battered in as if by some heavy iron instrument; their +faces were beaten into a pulp. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br/> +The Doctor’s Theory</h2> + +<p> +It is not easy to make any picture of the horror that lay dark on the hearts of +the people of Meirion. It was no longer possible to believe or to pretend to +believe that these men and women and children had met their deaths through +strange accidents. The little girl and the young laborer might have slipped and +fallen over the cliffs, but the woman who lay dead with the dead sheep at the +bottom of the quarry, the two men who had been lured into the ooze of the +marsh, the family who were found murdered on the Highway before their own +cottage door; in these cases there could be no room for the supposition of +accident. It seemed as if it were impossible to frame any conjecture or outline +of a conjecture that would account for these hideous and, as it seemed, utterly +purposeless crimes. For a time people said that there must be a madman at +large, a sort of country variant of Jack the Ripper, some horrible pervert who +was possessed by the passion of death, who prowled darkling about that lonely +land, hiding in woods and in wild places, always watching and seeking for the +victims of his desire. +</p> + +<p> +Indeed, Dr. Lewis, who found poor Williams, his wife and children miserably +slaughtered on the Highway, was convinced at first that the presence of a +concealed madman in the countryside offered the only possible solution to the +difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +“I felt sure,” he said to me afterwards, “that the Williams’s had been killed +by a homicidal maniac. It was the nature of the poor creatures’ injuries that +convinced me that this was the case. Some years ago—thirty-seven or +thirty-eight years ago as a matter of fact—I had something to do with a +case which on the face of it had a strong likeness to the Highway murder. At +that time I had a practice at Usk, in Monmouthshire. A whole family living in a +cottage by the roadside were murdered one evening; it was called, I think, the +Llangibby murder; the cottage was near the village of that name. The murderer +was caught in Newport; he was a Spanish sailor, named Garcia, and it appeared +that he had killed father, mother, and the three children for the sake of the +brass works of an old Dutch clock, which were found on him when he was +arrested. +</p> + +<p> +“Garcia had been serving a month’s imprisonment in Usk Jail for some small +theft, and on his release he set out to walk to Newport, nine or ten miles +away; no doubt to get another ship. He passed the cottage and saw the man +working in his garden. Garcia stabbed him with his sailor’s knife. The wife +rushed out; he stabbed her. Then he went into the cottage and stabbed the three +children, tried to set the place on fire, and made off with the clockworks. +That looked like the deed of a madman, but Garcia wasn’t mad—they hanged +him, I may say—he was merely a man of a very low type, a degenerate who +hadn’t the slightest value for human life. I am not sure, but I think he came +from one of the Spanish islands, where the people are said to be degenerates, +very likely from too much inter-breeding. +</p> + +<p> +“But my point is that Garcia stabbed to kill and did kill, with one blow in +each case. There was no senseless hacking and slashing. Now those poor people +on the Highway had their heads smashed to pieces by what must have been a storm +of blows. Any one of them would have been fatal, but the murderer must have +gone on raining blows with his iron hammer on people who were already stone +dead. And <i>that</i> sort of thing is the work of a madman, and nothing but a +madman. That’s how I argued the matter out to myself just after the event. +</p> + +<p> +“I was utterly wrong, monstrously wrong. But who could have suspected the +truth?” +</p> + +<p> +Thus Dr. Lewis, and I quote him, or the substance of him, as representative of +most of the educated opinion of the district at the beginnings of the terror. +People seized on this theory largely because it offered at least the comfort of +an explanation, and any explanation, even the poorest, is better than an +intolerable and terrible mystery. Besides, Dr. Lewis’s theory was plausible; it +explained the lack of purpose that seemed to characterize the murders. And +yet—there were difficulties even from the first. It was hardly possible +that a strange madman should be able to keep hidden in a countryside where any +stranger is instantly noted and noticed; sooner or later he would be seen as he +prowled along the lanes or across the wild places. Indeed, a drunken, cheerful, +and altogether harmless tramp was arrested by a farmer and his man in the fact +and act of sleeping off beer under a hedge; but the vagrant was able to prove +complete and undoubted alibis, and was soon allowed to go on his wandering way. +</p> + +<p> +Then another theory, or rather a variant of Dr. Lewis’s theory, was started. +This was to the effect that the person responsible for the outrages was, +indeed, a madman; but a madman only at intervals. It was one of the members of +the Porth Club, a certain Mr. Remnant, who was supposed to have originated this +more subtle explanation. Mr. Remnant was a middle-aged man, who, having nothing +particular to do, read a great many books by way of conquering the hours. He +talked to the club—doctors, retired colonels, parsons, +lawyers—about “personality,” quoted various psychological textbooks in +support of his contention that personality was sometimes fluid and unstable, +went back to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” as good evidence of this proposition, +and laid stress on Dr. Jekyll’s speculation that the human soul, so far from +being one and indivisible, might possibly turn out to be a mere polity, a +state in which dwelt many strange and incongruous citizens, whose characters +were not merely unknown but altogether unsurmised by that form of consciousness +which so rashly assumed that it was not only the president of the republic but +also its sole citizen. +</p> + +<p> +“The long and the short of it is,” Mr. Remnant concluded, “that any one of us +may be the murderer, though he hasn’t the faintest notion of the fact. Take +Llewelyn there.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Payne Llewelyn was an elderly lawyer, a rural Tulkinghorn. He was the +hereditary solicitor to the Morgans of Pentwyn. This does not sound anything +tremendous to the Saxons of London; but the style is far more than noble to the +Celts of West Wales; it is immemorial; Teilo Sant was of the collaterals of the +first known chief of the race. And Mr. Payne Llewelyn did his best to look like +the legal adviser of this ancient house. He was weighty, he was cautious, he +was sound, he was secure. I have compared him to Mr. Tulkinghorn of Lincoln’s +Inn Fields; but Mr. Llewelyn would most certainly never have dreamed of +employing his leisure in peering into the cupboards where the family skeletons +were hidden. Supposing such cupboards to have existed, Mr. Payne Llewelyn would +have risked large out-of-pocket expenses to furnish them with double, triple, +impregnable locks. He was a new man, an <i>advena</i>, certainly; for he was +partly of the Conquest, being descended on one side from Sir Payne Turberville; +but he meant to stand by the old stock. +</p> + +<p> +“Take Llewelyn now,” said Mr. Remnant. “Look here, Llewelyn, can you produce +evidence to show where you were on the night those people were murdered on the +Highway? I thought not.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Llewelyn, an elderly man, as I have said, hesitated before speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought not,” Remnant went on. “Now I say that it is perfectly possible that +Llewelyn may be dealing death throughout Meirion, although in his present +personality he may not have the faintest suspicion that there is another +Llewelyn within him, a Llewelyn who follows murder as a fine art.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Mr. Payne Llewelyn did not at all relish Mr. Remnant’s suggestion that he might +well be a secret murderer, ravening for blood, remorseless as a wild beast. He +thought the phrase about his following murder as a fine art was both +nonsensical and in the worst taste, and his opinion was not changed when +Remnant pointed out that it was used by De Quincey in the title of one of his +most famous essays. +</p> + +<p> +“If you had allowed me to speak,” he said with some coldness of manner, “I +would have told you that on Tuesday last, the night on which those unfortunate +people were murdered on the Highway I was staying at the Angel Hotel, Cardiff. +I had business in Cardiff, and I was detained till Wednesday afternoon.” +</p> + +<p> +Having given this satisfactory alibi, Mr. Payne Llewelyn left the club, and did +not go near it for the rest of the week. +</p> + +<p> +Remnant explained to those who stayed in the smoking room that, of course, he +had merely used Mr. Llewelyn as a concrete example of his theory, which, he +persisted, had the support of a considerable body of evidence. +</p> + +<p> +“There are several cases of double personality on record,” he declared. “And I +say again that it is quite possible that these murders may have been committed +by one of us in his secondary personality. Why, I may be the murderer in my +Remnant B. state, though Remnant A. knows nothing whatever about it, and is +perfectly convinced that he could not kill a fowl, much less a whole family. +Isn’t it so, Lewis?” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis said it was so, in theory, but he thought not in fact. +</p> + +<p> +“Most of the cases of double or multiple personality that have been +investigated,” he said, “have been in connection with the very dubious +experiments of hypnotism, or the still more dubious experiments of +spiritualism. All that sort of thing, in my opinion, is like tinkering with the +works of a clock—amateur tinkering, I mean. You fumble about with the +wheels and cogs and bits of mechanism that you don’t really know anything +about; and then you find your clock going backwards or striking 240 at +tea-time. And I believe it’s just the same thing with these psychical research +experiments; the secondary personality is very likely the result of the +tinkering and fumbling with a very delicate apparatus that we know nothing +about. Mind, I can’t say that it’s impossible for one of us to be the Highway +murderer in his B. state, as Remnant puts it. But I think it’s extremely +improbable. Probability is the guide of life, you know, Remnant,” said Dr. +Lewis, smiling at that gentleman, as if to say that he also had done a little +reading in his day. “And it follows, therefore, that improbability is also the +guide of life. When you get a very high degree of probability, that is, you are +justified in taking it as a certainty; and on the other hand, if a supposition +is highly improbable, you are justified in treating it as an impossible one. +That is, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.” +</p> + +<p> +“How about the thousandth case?” said Remnant. “Supposing these extraordinary +crimes constitute the thousandth case?” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor smiled and shrugged his shoulders, being tired of the subject. But +for some little time highly respectable members of Porth society would look +suspiciously at one another wondering whether, after all, there mightn’t be +“something in it.” However, both Mr. Remnant’s somewhat crazy theory and Dr. +Lewis’s plausible theory became untenable when two more victims of an awful and +mysterious death were offered up in sacrifice, for a man was found dead in the +Llanfihangel quarry, where the woman had been discovered. And on the same day a +girl of fifteen was found broken on the jagged rocks under the cliffs near +Porth. Now, it appeared that these two deaths must have occurred at about the +same time, within an hour of one another, certainly; and the distance between +the quarry and the cliffs by Black Rock is certainly twenty miles. +</p> + +<p> +“A motor could do it,” one man said. +</p> + +<p> +But it was pointed out that there was no high road between the two places; +indeed, it might be said that there was no road at all between them. There was +a network of deep, narrow, and tortuous lanes that wandered into one another at +all manner of queer angles for, say, seventeen miles; this in the middle, as it +were, between Black Rock and the quarry at Llanfihangel. But to get to the high +land of the cliffs one had to take a path that went through two miles of +fields; and the quarry lay a mile away from the nearest by-road in the midst of +gorse and bracken and broken land. And, finally, there was no track of +motor-car or motor-bicycle in the lanes which must have been followed to pass +from one place to the other. +</p> + +<p> +“What about an airplane, then?” said the man of the motor-car theory. Well, +there was certainly an aerodrome not far from one of the two places of death; +but somehow, nobody believed that the Flying Corps harbored a homicidal maniac. +It seemed clear, therefore, that there must be more than one person concerned +in the terror of Meirion. And Dr. Lewis himself abandoned his own theory. +</p> + +<p> +“As I said to Remnant at the Club,” he remarked, “improbability is the guide of +life. I can’t believe that there are a pack of madmen or even two madmen at +large in the country. I give it up.” +</p> + +<p> +And now a fresh circumstance or set of circumstances became manifest to +confound judgment and to awaken new and wild surmises. For at about this time +people realized that none of the dreadful events that were happening all about +them was so much as mentioned in the Press. I have already spoken of the fate +of the <i>Meiros Observer.</i> This paper was suppressed by the authorities +because it had inserted a brief paragraph about some person who had been “found +dead under mysterious circumstances”; I think that paragraph referred to the +first death of Llanfihangel quarry. Thenceforth, horror followed on horror, but +no word was printed in any of the local journals. The curious went to the +newspaper offices—there were two left in the county—but found +nothing save a firm refusal to discuss the matter. And the Cardiff papers were +drawn and found blank; and the London Press was apparently ignorant of the fact +that crimes that had no parallel were terrorizing a whole countryside. +Everybody wondered what could have happened, what was happening; and then it +was whispered that the coroner would allow no inquiry to be made as to these +deaths of darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“In consequence of instructions received from the Home Office,” one coroner was +understood to have said, “I have to tell the jury that their business will be +to hear the medical evidence and to bring in a verdict immediately in +accordance with that evidence. I shall disallow all questions.” +</p> + +<p> +One jury protested. The foreman refused to bring in any verdict at all. +</p> + +<p> +“Very good,” said the coroner. “Then I beg to inform you, Mr. Foreman and +gentlemen of the jury, that under the Defense of the Realm Act, I have power to +supersede your functions, and to enter a verdict according to the evidence +which has been laid before the Court as if it had been the verdict of you all.” +</p> + +<p> +The foreman and jury collapsed and accepted what they could not avoid. But the +rumors that got abroad of all this, added to the known fact that the terror was +ignored in the Press, no doubt by official command, increased the panic that +was now arising, and gave it a new direction. Clearly, people reasoned, these +Government restrictions and prohibitions could only refer to the war, to some +great danger in connection with the war. And that being so, it followed that +the outrages which must be kept so secret were the work of the enemy, that is +of concealed German agents. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br/> +The Spread of the Terror</h2> + +<p> +It is time, I think, for me to make one point clear. I began this history with +certain references to an extraordinary accident to an airman whose machine fell +to the ground after collision with a huge flock of pigeons; and then to an +explosion in a northern munition factory, an explosion, as I noted, of a very +singular kind. Then I deserted the neighborhood of London, and the northern +district, and dwelt on a mysterious and terrible series of events which +occurred in the summer of 1915 in a Welsh county, which I have named, for +convenience, Meirion. +</p> + +<p> +Well, let it be understood at once that all this detail that I have given about +the occurrences in Meirion does not imply that the county in the far west was +alone or especially afflicted by the terror that was over the land. They tell +me that in the villages about Dartmoor the stout Devonshire hearts sank as +men’s hearts used to sink in the time of plague and pestilence. There was +horror, too, about the Norfolk Broads, and far up by Perth no one would venture +on the path that leads by Scone to the wooded heights above the Tay. And in the +industrial districts: I met a man by chance one day in an odd London corner who +spoke with horror of what a friend had told him. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ask no questions, Ned,’ he says to me, ‘but I tell yow a’ was in Bairnigan +t’other day, and a’ met a pal who’d seen three hundred coffins going out of a +works not far from there.’” +</p> + +<p> +And then the ship that hovered outside the mouth of the Thames with all sails +set and beat to and fro in the wind, and never answered any hail, and showed no +light! The forts shot at her and brought down one of the masts, but she went +suddenly about with a change of wind under what sail still stood, and then +veered down Channel, and drove ashore at last on the sandbanks and pinewoods of +Arcachon, and not a man alive on her, but only rattling heaps of bones! That +last voyage of the <i>Semiramis</i> would be something horribly worth telling; +but I only heard it at a distance as a yarn, and only believed it because it +squared with other things that I knew for certain. +</p> + +<p> +This, then, is my point; I have written of the terror as it fell on Meirion, +simply because I have had opportunities of getting close there to what really +happened. Third or fourth or fifth hand in the other places; but round about +Porth and Merthyr Tegveth I have spoken with people who have seen the tracks of +the terror with their own eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I have said that the people of that far western county realized, not only +that death was abroad in their quiet lanes and on their peaceful hills, but +that for some reason it was to be kept all secret. Newspapers might not print +any news of it, the very juries summoned to investigate it were allowed to +investigate nothing. And so they concluded that this veil of secrecy must +somehow be connected with the war; and from this position it was not a long way +to a further inference: that the murderers of innocent men and women and +children were either Germans or agents of Germany. It would be just like the +Huns, everybody agreed, to think out such a devilish scheme as this; and they +always thought out their schemes beforehand. They hoped to seize Paris in a few +weeks, but when they were beaten on the Marne they had their trenches on the +Aisne ready to fall back on: it had all been prepared years before the war. And +so, no doubt, they had devised this terrible plan against England in case they +could not beat us in open fight: there were people ready, very likely, all over +the country, who were prepared to murder and destroy everywhere as soon as they +got the word. In this way the Germans intended to sow terror throughout England +and fill our hearts with panic and dismay, hoping so to weaken their enemy at +home that he would lose all heart over the war abroad. It was the Zeppelin +notion, in another form; they were committing these horrible and mysterious +outrages thinking that we should be frightened out of our wits. +</p> + +<p> +It all seemed plausible enough; Germany had by this time perpetrated so many +horrors and had so excelled in devilish ingenuities that no abomination seemed +too abominable to be probable, or too ingeniously wicked to be beyond the +tortuous malice of the Hun. But then came the questions as to who the agents of +this terrible design were, as to where they lived, as to how they contrived to +move unseen from field to field, from lane to lane. All sorts of fantastic +attempts were made to answer these questions; but it was felt that they +remained unanswered. Some suggested that the murderers landed from submarines, +or flew from hiding places on the West Coast of Ireland, coming and going by +night; but there were seen to be flagrant impossibilities in both these +suggestions. Everybody agreed that the evil work was no doubt the work of +Germany; but nobody could begin to guess how it was done. Somebody at the Club +asked Remnant for his theory. +</p> + +<p> +“My theory,” said that ingenious person, “is that human progress is simply a +long march from one inconceivable to another. Look at that airship of ours that +came over Porth yesterday: ten years ago that would have been an inconceivable +sight. Take the steam engine, stake printing, take the theory of gravitation: +they were all inconceivable till somebody thought of them. So it is, no doubt, +with this infernal dodgery that we’re talking about: the Huns have found it +out, and we haven’t; and there you are. We can’t conceive how these poor people +have been murdered, because the method’s inconceivable to us.” +</p> + +<p> +The club listened with some awe to this high argument. After Remnant had gone, +one member said: +</p> + +<p> +“Wonderful man, that.” “Yes,” said Dr. Lewis. “He was asked whether he knew +something. And his reply really amounted to ‘No, I don’t.’ But I have never +heard it better put.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It was, I suppose, at about this time when the people were puzzling their heads +as to the secret methods used by the Germans or their agents to accomplish +their crimes that a very singular circumstance became known to a few of the +Porth people. It related to the murder of the Williams family on the Highway in +front of their cottage door. I do not know that I have made it plain that the +old Roman road called the Highway follows the course of a long, steep hill that +goes steadily westward till it slants down and droops towards the sea. On +either side of the road the ground falls away, here into deep shadowy woods, +here to high pastures, now and again into a field of corn, but for the most +part into the wild and broken land that is characteristic of Arfon. The fields +are long and narrow, stretching up the steep hillside; they fall into sudden +dips and hollows, a well springs up in the midst of one and a grove of ash and +thorn bends over it, shading it; and beneath it the ground is thick with reeds +and rushes. And then may come on either side of such a field territories +glistening with the deep growth of bracken, and rough with gorse and rugged +with thickets of blackthorn, green lichen hanging strangely from the branches; +such are the lands on either side of the Highway. +</p> + +<p> +Now on the lower slopes of it, beneath the Williams’s cottage, some three or +four fields down the hill, there is a military camp. The place has been used as +a camp for many years, and lately the site has been extended and huts have been +erected. But a considerable number of the men were under canvas here in the +summer of 1915. +</p> + +<p> +On the night of the Highway murder this camp, as it appeared afterwards, was +the scene of the extraordinary panic of the horses. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +A good many men in the camp were asleep in their tents soon after 9:30, when +the Last Post was sounded. They woke up in panic. There was a thundering sound +on the steep hillside above them, and down upon the tents came half a dozen +horses, mad with fright, trampling the canvas, trampling the men, bruising +dozens of them and killing two. +</p> + +<p> +Everything was in wild confusion, men groaning and screaming in the darkness, +struggling with the canvas and the twisted ropes, shouting out, some of them, +raw lads enough, that the Germans had landed, others wiping the blood from +their eyes, a few, roused suddenly from heavy sleep, hitting out at one +another, officers coming up at the double roaring out orders to the sergeants, +a party of soldiers who were just returning to camp from the village seized +with fright at what they could scarcely see or distinguish, at the wildness of +the shouting and cursing and groaning that they could not understand, bolting +out of the camp again and racing for their lives back to the village: +everything in the maddest confusion of wild disorder. +</p> + +<p> +Some of the men had seen the horses galloping down the hill as if terror itself +was driving them. They scattered off into the darkness, and somehow or another +found their way back in the night to their pasture above the camp. They were +grazing there peacefully in the morning, and the only sign of the panic of the +night before was the mud they had scattered all over themselves as they pelted +through a patch of wet ground. The farmer said they were as quiet a lot as any +in Meirion; he could make nothing of it. +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed,” he said, “I believe they must have seen the devil himself to be in +such a fright as that: save the people!” +</p> + +<p> +Now all this was kept as quiet as might be at the time when it happened; it +became known to the men of the Porth Club in the days when they were discussing +the difficult question of the German outrages, as the murders were commonly +called. And this wild stampede of the farm horses was held by some to be +evidence of the extraordinary and unheard of character of the dreadful agency +that was at work. One of the members of the club had been told by an officer +who was in the camp at the time of the panic that the horses that came charging +down were in a perfect fury of fright, that he had never seen horses in such a +state, and so there was endless speculation as to the nature of the sight or +the sound that had driven half a dozen quiet beasts into raging madness. +</p> + +<p> +Then, in the middle of this talk, two or three other incidents, quite as odd +and incomprehensible, came to be known, borne on chance trickles of gossip that +came into the towns from outland farms, or were carried by cottagers tramping +into Porth on market day with a fowl or two and eggs and garden stuff; scraps +and fragments of talk gathered by servants from the country folk and +repeated—to their mistresses. And in such ways it came out that up at +Plas Newydd there had been a terrible business over swarming the bees; they had +turned as wild as wasps and much more savage. They had come about the people +who were taking the swarms like a cloud. They settled on one man’s face so that +you could not see the flesh for the bees crawling all over it, and they had +stung him so badly that the doctor did not know whether he would get over it, +and they had chased a girl who had come out to see the swarming, and settled on +her and stung her to death. Then they had gone off to a brake below the farm +and got into a hollow tree there, and it was not safe to go near it, for they +would come out at you by day or by night. +</p> + +<p> +And much the same thing had happened, it seemed, at three or four farms and +cottages where bees were kept. And there were stories, hardly so clear or so +credible, of sheep dogs, mild and trusted beasts, turning as savage as wolves +and injuring the farm boys in a horrible manner—in one case it was said +with fatal results. It was certainly true that old Mrs. Owen’s favorite +Brahma-Dorking cock had gone mad; she came into Porth one Saturday morning with +her face and her neck all bound up and plastered. She had gone out to her bit +of a field to feed the poultry the night before, and the bird had flown at her +and attacked her most savagely, inflicting some very nasty wounds before she +could beat it off. +</p> + +<p> +“There was a stake handy, lucky for me,” she said, “and I did beat him and beat +him till the life was out of him. But what is come to the world, whatever?” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Now Remnant, the man of theories, was also a man of extreme leisure. It was +understood that he had succeeded to ample means when he was quite a young man, +and after tasting the savors of the law, as it were, for half a dozen terms at +the board of the Middle Temple, he had decided that it would be senseless to +bother himself with passing examinations for a profession which he had not the +faintest intention of practising. So he turned a deaf ear to the call of +“Manger” ringing through the Temple Courts, and set himself out to potter +amiably through the world. He had pottered all over Europe, he had looked at +Africa, and had even put his head in at the door of the East, on a trip which +included the Greek isles and Constantinople. Now getting into the middle +fifties, he had settled at Porth for the sake, as he said, of the Gulf Stream +and the fuchsia hedges, and pottered over his books and his theories and the +local gossip. He was no more brutal than the general public, which revels in +the details of mysterious crime; but it must be said that the terror, black +though it was, was a boon to him. He peered and investigated and poked about +with the relish of a man to whose life a new zest has been added. He listened +attentively to the strange tales of bees and dogs and poultry that came into +Porth with the country baskets of butter, rabbits, and green peas; and he +evolved at last a most extraordinary theory. +</p> + +<p> +Full of this discovery, as he thought it, he went one night to see Dr. Lewis +and take his view of the matter. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to talk to you,” said Remnant to the doctor, “about what I have called +provisionally, the Z Ray.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br/> +The Incident of the Unknown Tree</h2> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis, smiling indulgently, and quite prepared for some monstrous piece of +theorizing, led Remnant into the room that overlooked the terraced garden and +the sea. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor’s house, though it was only a ten minutes’ walk from the center of +the town, seemed remote from all other habitations. The drive to it from the +road came through a deep grove of trees and a dense shrubbery, trees were about +the house on either side, mingling with neighboring groves, and below, the +garden fell down, terrace by green terrace, to wild growth, a twisted path +amongst red rocks, and at last to the yellow sand of a little cove. The room to +which the doctor took Remnant looked over these terraces and across the water +to the dim boundaries of the bay. It had French windows that were thrown wide +open, and the two men sat in the soft light of the lamp—this was before +the days of severe lighting regulations in the Far West—and enjoyed the +sweet odors and the sweet vision of the summer evening. Then Remnant began: +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose, Lewis, you’ve heard these extraordinary stories of bees and dogs +and things that have been going about lately?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly I have heard them. I was called in at Plas Newydd, and treated +Thomas Trevor, who’s only just out of danger, by the way. I certified for the +poor child, Mary Trevor. She was dying when I got to the place. There was no +doubt she was stung to death by bees, and I believe there were other very +similar cases at Llantarnam and Morwen; none fatal, I think. What about them?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well: then there are the stories of good-tempered old sheepdogs turning wicked +and ‘savaging’ children?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so. I haven’t seen any of these cases professionally; but I believe the +stories are accurate enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the old woman assaulted by her own poultry?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s perfectly true. Her daughter put some stuff of their own concoction on +her face and neck, and then she came to me. The wounds seemed going all right, +so I told her to continue the treatment, whatever it might be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very good,” said Mr. Remnant. He spoke now with an italic impressiveness. +“<i>Don’t you see the link between all this and the horrible things that have +been happening about here for the last month?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Lewis stared at Remnant in amazement. He lifted his red eyebrows and lowered +them in a kind of scowl. His speech showed traces of his native accent. +</p> + +<p> +“Great burning!” he exclaimed. “What on earth are you getting at now? It is +madness. Do you mean to tell me that you think there is some connection between +a swarm or two of bees that have turned nasty, a cross dog, and a wicked old +barn-door cock and these poor people that have been pitched over the cliffs and +hammered to death on the road? There’s no sense in it, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am strongly inclined to believe that there is a great deal of sense in it,” +replied Remnant, with extreme calmness. “Look here, Lewis, I saw you grinning +the other day at the club when I was telling the fellows that in my opinion all +these outrages had been committed, certainly by the Germans, but by some method +of which we have no conception. But what I meant to say when I talked about +inconceivables was just this: that the Williams’s and the rest of them have +been killed in some way that’s not in theory at all, not in our theory, at all +events, some way we’ve not contemplated, not thought of for an instant. Do you +see my point?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, in a sort of way. You mean there’s an absolute originality in the +method? I suppose that is so. But what next?” +</p> + +<p> +Remnant seemed to hesitate, partly from a sense of the portentous nature of +what he was about to say, partly from a sort of half-unwillingness to part with +so profound a secret. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “you will allow that we have two sets of phenomena of a very +extraordinary kind occurring at the same time. Don’t you think that it’s only +reasonable to connect the two sets with one another.” +</p> + +<p> +“So the philosopher of Tenterden steeple and the Goodwin Sands thought, +certainly,” said Lewis. “But what is the connection? Those poor folks on the +Highway weren’t stung by bees or worried by a dog. And horses don’t throw +people over cliffs or stifle them in marshes.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I never meant to suggest anything so absurd. It is evident to me that in +all these cases of animals turning suddenly savage the cause has been terror, +panic, fear. The horses that went charging into the camp were mad with fright, +we know. And I say that in the other instances we have been discussing the +cause was the same. The creatures were exposed to an infection of fear, and a +frightened beast or bird or insect uses its weapons, whatever they may be. If, +for example, there had been anybody with those horses when they took their +panic they would have lashed out at him with their heels.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I dare say that that is so. Well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well; my belief is that the Germans have made an extraordinary discovery. I +have called it the Z Ray. You know that the ether is merely an hypothesis; we +have to suppose that it’s there to account for the passage of the Marconi +current from one place to another. Now, suppose that there is a psychic ether +as well as a material ether, suppose that it is possible to direct irresistible +impulses across this medium, suppose that these impulses are towards murder or +suicide; then I think that you have an explanation of the terrible series of +events that have been happening in Meirion for the last few weeks. And it is +quite clear to my mind that the horses and the other creatures have been +exposed to this Z Ray, and that it has produced on them the effect of terror, +with ferocity as the result of terror. Now what do you say to that? Telepathy, +you know, is well established; so is hypnotic suggestion. You have only to look +in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ to see that, and suggestion is so strong in +some cases as to be an irresistible imperative. Now don’t you feel that putting +telepathy and suggestion together, as it were, you have more than the elements +of what I call the Z Ray? I feel myself that I have more to go on in making my +hypothesis than the inventor of the steam engine had in making his hypothesis +when he saw the lid of the kettle bobbing up and down. What do you say?” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis made no answer. He was watching the growth of a new, unknown tree in +his garden. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The doctor made no answer to Remnant’s question. For one thing, Remnant was +profuse in his eloquence—he has been rigidly condensed in this +history—and Lewis was tired of the sound of his voice. For another thing, +he found the Z Ray theory almost too extravagant to be bearable, wild enough to +tear patience to tatters. And then as the tedious argument continued Lewis +became conscious that there was something strange about the night. +</p> + +<p> +It was a dark summer night. The moon was old and faint, above the Dragon’s Head +across the bay, and the air was very still. It was so still that Lewis had +noted that not a leaf stirred on the very tip of a high tree that stood out +against the sky; and yet he knew that he was listening to some sound that he +could not determine or define. It was not the wind in the leaves, it was not +the gentle wash of the water of the sea against the rocks; that latter sound he +could distinguish quite easily. But there was something else. It was scarcely a +sound; it was as if the air itself trembled and fluttered, as the air trembles +in a church when they open the great pedal pipes of the organ. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor listened intently. It was not an illusion, the sound was not in his +own head, as he had suspected for a moment; but for the life of him he could +not make out whence it came or what it was. He gazed down into the night over +the terraces of his garden, now sweet with the scent of the flowers of the +night; tried to peer over the tree-tops across the sea towards the Dragon’s +Head. It struck him suddenly that this strange fluttering vibration of the air +might be the noise of a distant aeroplane or airship; there was not the usual +droning hum, but this sound might be caused by a new type of engine. A new type +of engine? Possibly it was an enemy airship; their range, it had been said, was +getting longer; and Lewis was just going to call Remnant’s attention to the +sound, to its possible cause, and to the possible danger that might be hovering +over them, when he saw something that caught his breath and his heart with wild +amazement and a touch of terror. +</p> + +<p> +He had been staring upward into the sky, and, about to speak to Remnant, he had +let his eyes drop for an instant. He looked down towards the trees in the +garden, and saw with utter astonishment that one had changed its shape in the +few hours that had passed since the setting of the sun. There was a thick grove +of ilexes bordering the lowest terrace, and above them rose one tall pine, +spreading its head of sparse, dark branches dark against the sky. +</p> + +<p> +As Lewis glanced down over the terraces he saw that the tall pine tree was no +longer there. In its place there rose above the ilexes what might have been a +greater ilex; there was the blackness of a dense growth of foliage rising like +a broad and far-spreading and rounded cloud over the lesser trees. +</p> + +<p> +Here, then was a sight wholly incredible, impossible. It is doubtful whether +the process of the human mind in such a case has ever been analyzed and +registered; it is doubtful whether it ever can be registered. It is hardly fair +to bring in the mathematician, since he deals with absolute truth (so far as +mortality can conceive absolute truth); but how would a mathematician feel if +he were suddenly confronted with a two-sided triangle? I suppose he would +instantly become a raging madman; and Lewis, staring wide-eyed and wild-eyed at +a dark and spreading tree which his own experience informed him was not there, +felt for an instant that shock which should affront us all when we first +realize the intolerable antinomy of Achilles and the Tortoise. Common sense +tells us that Achilles will flash past the tortoise almost with the speed of +the lightning; the inflexible truth of mathematics assures us that till the +earth boils and the heavens cease to endure the Tortoise must still be in +advance; and thereupon we should, in common decency, go mad. We do not go mad, +because, by special grace, we are certified that, in the final court of +appeal, all science is a lie, even the highest science of all; and so we simply +grin at Achilles and the Tortoise, as we grin at Darwin, deride Huxley, and +laugh at Herbert Spencer. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis did not grin. He glared into the dimness of the night, at the great +spreading tree that he knew could not be there. And as he gazed he saw that +what at first appeared the dense blackness of foliage was fretted and starred +with wonderful appearances of lights and colors. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards he said to me: “I remember thinking to myself: ‘Look here, I am not +delirious; my temperature is perfectly normal. I am not drunk; I only had a +pint of Graves with my dinner, over three hours ago. I have not eaten any +poisonous fungus; I have not taken <i>Anhelonium Lewinii</i> experimentally. +So, now then! What is happening?’” +</p> + +<p> +The night had gloomed over; clouds obscured the faint moon and the misty stars. +Lewis rose, with some kind of warning and inhibiting gesture to Remnant, who, +he was conscious was gaping at him in astonishment. He walked to the open +French window, and took a pace forward on to the path outside, and looked, very +intently, at the dark shape of the tree, down below the sloping garden, above +the washing of the waves. He shaded the light of the lamp behind him by holding +his hands on each side of his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +The mass of the tree—the tree that couldn’t be there—stood out +against the sky, but not so clearly, now that the clouds had rolled up. Its +edges, the limits of its leafage, were not so distinct. Lewis thought that he +could detect some sort of quivering movement in it; though the air was at a +dead calm. It was a night on which one might hold up a lighted match and watch +it burn without any wavering or inclination of the flame. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” said Lewis, “how a bit of burnt paper will sometimes hang over the +coals before it goes up the chimney, and little worms of fire will shoot +through it. It was like that, if you should be standing some distance away. +Just threads and hairs of yellow light I saw, and specks and sparks of fire, +and then a twinkling of a ruby no bigger than a pin point, and a green +wandering in the black, as if an emerald were crawling, and then little veins +of deep blue. ‘Woe is me!’ I said to myself in Welsh, ‘What is all this color +and burning?’ +</p> + +<p> +“And, then, at that very moment there came a thundering rap at the door of the +room inside, and there was my man telling me that I was wanted directly up at +the Garth, as old Mr. Trevor Williams had been taken very bad. I knew his heart +was not worth much, so I had to go off directly, and leave Remnant to make what +he could of it all.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br/> +Mr. Remnant’s Z Ray </h2> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis was kept some time at the Garth. It was past twelve when he got back +to his house. +</p> + +<p> +He went quickly to the room that overlooked the garden and the sea and threw +open the French window and peered into the darkness. There, dim indeed against +the dim sky but unmistakable, was the tall pine with its sparse branches, high +above the dense growth of the ilex trees. The strange boughs which had amazed +him had vanished; there was no appearance now of colors or of fires. +</p> + +<p> +He drew his chair up to the open window and sat there gazing and wondering far +into the night, till brightness came upon the sea and sky, and the forms of the +trees in the garden grew clear and evident. He went up to his bed at last +filled with a great perplexity, still asking questions to which there was no +answer. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor did not say anything about the strange tree to Remnant. When they +next met, Lewis said that he had thought there was a man hiding amongst the +bushes—this in explanation of that warning gesture he had used, and of +his going out into the garden and staring into the night. He concealed the +truth because he dreaded the Remnant doctrine that would undoubtedly be +produced; indeed, he hoped that he had heard the last of the theory of the Z +Ray. But Remnant firmly reopened this subject. +</p> + +<p> +“We were interrupted just as I was putting my case to you,” he said. “And to +sum it all up, it amounts to this: that the Huns have made one of the great +leaps of science. They are sending ‘suggestions’ (which amount to irresistible +commands) over here, and the persons affected are seized with suicidal or +homicidal mania. The people who were killed by falling over the cliffs or into +the quarry probably committed suicide; and so with the man and boy who were +found in the bog. As to the Highway case, you remember that Thomas Evans said +that he stopped and talked to Williams on the night of the murder. In my +opinion Evans was the murderer. He came under the influence of the Ray, became +a homicidal maniac in an instant, snatched Williams’s spade from his hand and +killed him and the others.” +</p> + +<p> +“The bodies were found by me on the road.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is possible that the first impact of the Ray produces violent nervous +excitement, which would manifest itself externally. Williams might have called +to his wife to come and see what was the matter with Evans. The children would +naturally follow their mother. It seems to me simple. And as for the +animals—the horses, dogs, and so forth, they as I say, were no doubt +panic stricken by the Ray, and hence driven to frenzy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should Evans have murdered Williams instead of Williams murdering Evans? +Why should the impact of the Ray affect one and not the other?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why does one man react violently to a certain drug, while it makes no +impression on another man? Why is A able to drink a bottle of whisky and remain +sober, while B is turned into something very like a lunatic after he has drunk +three glasses?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a question of idiosyncrasy,” said the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“Is idiosyncrasy Greek for ‘I don’t know’?” asked Remnant. +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all,” said Lewis, smiling blandly. “I mean that in some diatheses +whisky—as you have mentioned whisky—appears not to be pathogenic, +or at all events not immediately pathogenic. In other cases, as you very justly +observed, there seems to be a very marked cachexia associated with the +exhibition of the spirit in question, even in comparatively small doses.” +</p> + +<p> +Under this cloud of professional verbiage Lewis escaped from the Club and from +Remnant. He did not want to hear any more about that Dreadful Ray, because he +felt sure that the Ray was all nonsense. But asking himself why he felt this +certitude in the matter he had to confess that he didn’t know. An aeroplane, he +reflected, was all nonsense before it was made; and he remembered talking in +the early nineties to a friend of his about the newly discovered X Rays. The +friend laughed incredulously, evidently didn’t believe a word of it, till Lewis +told him that there was an article on the subject in the current number of the +<i>Saturday Review</i>; whereupon the unbeliever said, “Oh, is that so? Oh, +really. I <i>see</i>,” and was converted on the X Ray faith on the spot. Lewis, +remembering this talk, marveled at the strange processes of the human mind, its +illogical and yet all-compelling <i>ergos</i>, and wondered whether he himself +was only waiting for an article on the Z Ray in the <i>Saturday Review</i> to +become a devout believer in the doctrine of Remnant. +</p> + +<p> +But he wondered with far more fervor as to the extraordinary thing he had seen +in his own garden with his own eyes. The tree that changed all its shape for an +hour or two of the night, the growth of strange boughs, the apparition of +secret fires among them, the sparkling of emerald and ruby lights: how could +one fail to be afraid with great amazement at the thought of such a mystery? +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis’s thoughts were distracted from the incredible adventure of the tree +by the visit of his sister and her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Merritt lived in a +well-known manufacturing town of the Midlands, which was now, of course, a +center of munition work. On the day of their arrival at Porth, Mrs. Merritt, +who was tired after the long, hot journey, went to bed early, and Merritt and +Lewis went into the room by the garden for their talk and tobacco. They spoke +of the year that had passed since their last meeting, of the weary dragging of +the war, of friends that had perished in it, of the hopelessness of an early +ending of all this misery. Lewis said nothing of the terror that was on the +land. One does not greet a tired man who is come to a quiet, sunny place for +relief from black smoke and work and worry with a tale of horror. Indeed, the +doctor saw that his brother-in-law looked far from well. And he seemed “jumpy”; +there was an occasional twitch of his mouth that Lewis did not like at all. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the doctor, after an interval of silence and port wine, “I am glad +to see you here again. Porth always suits you. I don’t think you’re looking +quite up to your usual form. But three weeks of Meirion air will do wonders.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I hope it will,” said the other. “I am not up to the mark. Things are +not going well at Midlingham.” +</p> + +<p> +“Business is all right, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Business is all right. But there are other things that are all wrong. We +are living under a reign of terror. It comes to that.” +</p> + +<p> +“What on earth do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I suppose I may tell you what I know. It’s not much. I didn’t dare write +it. But do you know that at every one of the munition works in Midlingham and +all about it there’s a guard of soldiers with drawn bayonets and loaded rifles +day and night? Men with bombs, too. And machine-guns at the big factories.” +</p> + +<p> +“German spies?” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t want Lewis guns to fight spies with. Nor bombs. Nor a platoon of +men. I woke up last night. It was the machine-gun at Benington’s Army Motor +Works. Firing like fury. And then bang! bang! bang! That was the hand bombs.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what against?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody knows.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody knows what is happening,” Merritt repeated, and he went on to describe +the bewilderment and terror that hung like a cloud over the great industrial +city in the Midlands, how the feeling of concealment, of some intolerable +secret danger that must not be named, was worst of all. +</p> + +<p> +“A young fellow I know,” he said, “was on short leave the other day from the +front, and he spent it with his people at Belmont—that’s about four miles +out of Midlingham, you know. ‘Thank God,’ he said to me, ‘I am going back +to-morrow. It’s no good saying that the Wipers salient is nice, because it +isn’t. But it’s a damned sight better than this. At the front you know what +you’re up against anyhow.’ At Midlingham everybody has the feeling that we’re +up against something awful and we don’t know what; it’s that that makes people +inclined to whisper. There’s terror in the air.” +</p> + +<p> +Merritt made a sort of picture of the great town cowering in its fear of an +unknown danger. +</p> + +<p> +“People are afraid to go about alone at nights in the outskirts. They make up +parties at the stations to go home together if it’s anything like dark, or if +there are any lonely bits on their way.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why? I don’t understand. What are they afraid of?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I told you about my being awakened up the other night with the +machine-guns at the motor works rattling away, and the bombs exploding and +making the most terrible noise. That sort of thing alarms one, you know. It’s +only natural.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, it must be very terrifying. You mean, then, there is a general +nervousness about, a vague sort of apprehension that makes people inclined to +herd together?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s that, and there’s more. People have gone out that have never come +back. There were a couple of men in the train to Holme, arguing about the +quickest way to get to Northend, a sort of outlying part of Holme where they +both lived. They argued all the way out of Midlingham, one saying that the high +road was the quickest though it was the longest way. ‘It’s the quickest going +because it’s the cleanest going,’ he said.” +</p> + +<p> +“The other chap fancied a short cut across the fields, by the canal. ‘It’s half +the distance,’ he kept on. ‘Yes, if you don’t lose your way,’ said the other. +Well, it appears they put an even half-crown on it, and each was to try his own +way when they got out of the train. It was arranged that they were to meet at +the ‘Wagon’ in Northend. ‘I shall be at the “Wagon” first,’ said the man who +believed in the short cut, and with that he climbed over the stile and made off +across the fields. It wasn’t late enough to be really dark, and a lot of them +thought he might win the stakes. But he never turned up at the Wagon—or +anywhere else for the matter of that.” +</p> + +<p> +“What happened to him?” +</p> + +<p> +“He was found lying on his back in the middle of a field—some way from +the path. He was dead. The doctors said he’d been suffocated. Nobody knows how. +Then there have been other cases. We whisper about them at Midlingham, but +we’re afraid to speak out.” +</p> + +<p> +Lewis was ruminating all this profoundly. Terror in Meirion and terror far away +in the heart of England; but at Midlingham, so far as he could gather from +these stories of soldiers on guard, of crackling machine-guns, it was a case of +an organized attack on the munitioning of the army. He felt that he did not +know enough to warrant his deciding that the terror of Meirion and of +Stratfordshire were one. +</p> + +<p> +Then Merritt began again: +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a queer story going about, when the door’s shut and the curtain’s +drawn, that is, as to a place right out in the country over the other side of +Midlingham; on the opposite side to Dunwich. They’ve built one of the new +factories out there, a great red brick town of sheds they tell me it is, with a +tremendous chimney. It’s not been finished more than a month or six weeks. They +plumped it down right in the middle of the fields, by the line, and they’re +building huts for the workers as fast as they can but up to the present the men +are billeted all about, up and down the line. +</p> + +<p> +“About two hundred yards from this place there’s an old footpath, leading from +the station and the main road up to a small hamlet on the hillside. Part of the +way this path goes by a pretty large wood, most of it thick undergrowth. I +should think there must be twenty acres of wood, more or less. As it happens, I +used this path once long ago; and I can tell you it’s a black place of nights. +</p> + +<p> +“A man had to go this way one night. He got along all right till he came to the +wood. And then he said his heart dropped out of his body. It was awful to hear +the noises in that wood. Thousands of men were in it, he swears that. It was +full of rustling, and pattering of feet trying to go dainty, and the crack of +dead boughs lying on the ground as some one trod on them, and swishing of the +grass, and some sort of chattering speech going on, that sounded, so he said, +as if the dead sat in their bones and talked! He ran for his life, anyhow; +across fields, over hedges, through brooks. He must have run, by his tale, ten +miles out of his way before he got home to his wife, and beat at the door, and +broke in, and bolted it behind him.”. +</p> + +<p> +“There is something rather alarming about any wood at night,” said Dr. Lewis. +</p> + +<p> +Merritt shrugged his shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“People say that the Germans have landed, and that they are hiding in +underground places all over the country.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br/> +The Case of the Hidden Germans</h2> + +<p> +Lewis gasped for a moment, silent in contemplation of the magnificence of +rumor. The Germans already landed, hiding underground, striking by night, +secretly, terribly, at the power of England! Here was a conception which made +the myth of “The Russians” a paltry fable; before which the Legend of Mons was +an ineffectual thing. +</p> + +<p> +It was monstrous. And yet— +</p> + +<p> +He looked steadily at Merritt; a square-headed, black-haired, solid sort of +man. He had symptoms of nerves about him for the moment, certainly, but one +could not wonder at that, whether the tales he told were true, or whether he +merely believed them to be true. Lewis had known his brother-in-law for twenty +years or more, and had always found him a sure man in his own small world. “But +then,” said the doctor to himself, “those men, if they once get out of the ring +of that little world of theirs, they are lost. Those are the men that believed +in Madame Blavatsky.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he said, “what do you think yourself? The Germans landed and hiding +somewhere about the country: there’s something extravagant in the notion, isn’t +there?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what to think. You can’t get over the facts. There are the +soldiers with their rifles and their guns at the works all over Stratfordshire, +and those guns go off. I told you I’d heard them. Then who are the soldiers +shooting at? That’s what we ask ourselves at Midlingham.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so; I quite understand. It’s an extraordinary state of things.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s more than extraordinary; it’s an awful state of things. It’s terror in +the dark, and there’s nothing worse than that. As that young fellow I was +telling you about said, ‘At the front you do know what you’re up against.’” +</p> + +<p> +“And people really believe that a number of Germans have somehow got over to +England and have hid themselves underground?” +</p> + +<p> +“People say they’ve got a new kind of poison-gas. Some think that they dig +underground places and make the gas there, and lead it by secret pipes into the +shops; others say that they throw gas bombs into the factories. It must be +worse than anything they’ve used in France, from what the authorities say.” +</p> + +<p> +“The authorities? Do <i>they</i> admit that there are Germans in hiding about +Midlingham?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. They call it ‘explosions.’ But we know it isn’t explosions. We know in the +Midlands what an explosion sounds like and looks like. And we know that the +people killed in these ‘explosions’ are put into their coffins in the works. +Their own relations are not allowed to see them.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so you believe in the German theory?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I do, it’s because one must believe in something. Some say they’ve seen the +gas. I heard that a man living in Dunwich saw it one night like a black cloud +with sparks of fire in it floating over the tops of the trees by Dunwich +Common.” +</p> + +<p> +The light of an ineffable amazement came into Lewis’s eyes. The night of +Remnant’s visit, the trembling vibration of the air, the dark tree that had +grown in his garden since the setting of the sun, the strange leafage that was +starred with burning, with emerald and ruby fires, and all vanished away when +he returned from his visit to the Garth; and such a leafage had appeared as a +burning cloud far in the heart of England: what intolerable mystery, what +tremendous doom was signified in this? But one thing was clear and certain: +that the terror of Meirion was also the terror of the Midlands. +</p> + +<p> +Lewis made up his mind most firmly that if possible all this should be kept +from his brother-in-law. Merritt had come to Porth as to a city of refuge from +the horrors of Midlingham; if it could be managed he should be spared the +knowledge that the cloud of terror had gone before him and hung black over the +western land. Lewis passed the port and said in an even voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Very strange, indeed; a black cloud with sparks of fire?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t answer for it, you know; it’s only a rumor.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just so; and you think or you’re inclined to think that this and all the rest +you’ve told me is to be put down to the hidden Germans?” +</p> + +<p> +“As I say; because one must think something.” +</p> + +<p> +“I quite see your point. No doubt, if it’s true, it’s the most awful blow that +has ever been dealt at any nation in the whole history of man. The enemy +established in our vitals! But is it possible, after all? How could it have +been worked?” +</p> + +<p> +Merritt told Lewis how it had been worked, or rather, how people said it had +been worked. The idea, he said, was that this was a part, and a most important +part, of the great German plot to destroy England and the British Empire. +</p> + +<p> +The scheme had been prepared years ago, some thought soon after the +Franco-Prussian War. Moltke had seen that the invasion of England (in the +ordinary sense of the term invasion) presented very great difficulties. The +matter was constantly in discussion in the inner military and high political +circles, and the general trend of opinion in these quarters was that at the +best, the invasion of England would involve Germany in the gravest +difficulties, and leave France in the position of the <i>tertius gaudens</i>. +This was the state of affairs when a very high Prussian personage was +approached by the Swedish professor, Huvelius. +</p> + +<p> +Thus Merritt, and here I would say in parenthesis that this Huvelius was by all +accounts an extraordinary man. Considered personally and apart from his +writings he would appear to have been a most amiable individual. He was richer +than the generality of Swedes, certainly far richer than the average university +professor in Sweden. But his shabby, green frock-coat, and his battered, furry +hat were notorious in the university town where he lived. No one laughed, +because it was well known that Professor Huvelius spent every penny of his +private means and a large portion of his official stipend on works of kindness +and charity. He hid his head in a garret, some one said, in order that others +might be able to swell on the first floor. It was told of him that he +restricted himself to a diet of dry bread and coffee for a month in order that +a poor woman of the streets, dying of consumption, might enjoy luxuries in +hospital. +</p> + +<p> +And this was the man who wrote the treatise “De Facinore Humano”; to prove the +infinite corruption of the human race. +</p> + +<p> +Oddly enough, Professor Huvelius wrote the most cynical book in the +world—Hobbes preaches rosy sentimentalism in comparison—with the +very highest motives. He held that a very large part of human misery, +misadventure, and sorrow was due to the false convention that the heart of man +was naturally and in the main well disposed and kindly, if not exactly +righteous. “Murderers, thieves, assassins, violators, and all the host of the +abominable,” he says in one passage, “are created by the false pretense and +foolish credence of human virtue. A lion in a cage is a fierce beast, indeed; +but what will he be if we declare him to be a lamb and open the doors of his +den? Who will be guilty of the deaths of the men, women and children whom he +will surely devour, save those who unlocked the cage?” And he goes on to show +that kings and the rulers of the peoples could decrease the sum of human misery +to a vast extent by acting on the doctrine of human wickedness. “War,” he +declares, “which is one of the worst of evils, will always continue to exist. +But a wise king will desire a brief war rather than a lengthy one, a short evil +rather than a long evil. And this not from the benignity of his heart towards +his enemies, for we have seen that the human heart is naturally malignant, but +because he desires to conquer, and to conquer easily, without a great +expenditure of men or of treasure, knowing that if he can accomplish this feat +his people will love him and his crown will be secure. So he will wage brief +victorious wars, and not only spare his own nation, but the nation of the +enemy, since in a short war the loss is less on both sides than in a long war. +And so from evil will come good.” +</p> + +<p> +And how, asks Huvelius, are such wars to be waged? The wise prince, he replies, +will begin by assuming the enemy to be infinitely corruptible and infinitely +stupid, since stupidity and corruption are the chief characteristics of man. So +the prince will make himself friends in the very councils of his enemy, and +also amongst the populace, bribing the wealthy by proffering to them the +opportunity of still greater wealth, and winning the poor by swelling words. +“For, contrary to the common opinion, it is the wealthy who are greedy of +wealth; while the populace are to be gained by talking to them about liberty, +their unknown god. And so much are they enchanted by the words liberty, +freedom, and such like, that the wise can go to the poor, rob them of what +little they have, dismiss them with a hearty kick, and win their hearts and +their votes for ever, if only they will assure them that the treatment which +they have received is called liberty.” +</p> + +<p> +Guided by these principles, says Huvelius, the wise prince will entrench +himself in the country that he desires to conquer; “nay, with but little +trouble, he may actually and literally throw his garrisons into the heart of +the enemy country before war has begun.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +This is a long and tiresome parenthesis; but it is necessary as explaining the +long tale which Merritt told his brother-in-law, he having received it from +some magnate of the Midlands, who had traveled in Germany. It is probable that +the story was suggested in the first place by the passage from Huvelius which I +have just quoted. +</p> + +<p> +Merritt knew nothing of the real Huvelius, who was all but a saint; he thought +of the Swedish professor as a monster of iniquity, “worse,” as he said, “than +Neech”—meaning, no doubt, Nietzsche. +</p> + +<p> +So he told the story of how Huvelius had sold his plan to the Germans; a plan +for filling England with German soldiers. Land was to be bought in certain +suitable and well-considered places, Englishmen were to be bought as the +apparent owners of such land, and secret excavations were to be made, till the +country was literally undermined. A subterranean Germany, in fact, was to be +dug under selected districts of England; there were to be great caverns, +underground cities, well drained, well ventilated, supplied with water, and in +these places vast stores both of food and of munitions were to be accumulated, +year after year, till “the Day” dawned. And then, warned in time, the secret +garrison would leave shops, hotels, offices, villas, and vanish underground, +ready to begin their work of bleeding England at the heart. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what Henson told me,” said Merritt at the end of his long story. +“Henson, head of the Buckley Iron and Steel Syndicate. He has been a lot in +Germany.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Lewis, “of course, it may be so. If it is so, it is terrible +beyond words.” +</p> + +<p> +Indeed, he found something horribly plausible in the story. It was an +extraordinary plan, of course; an unheard of scheme; but it did not seem +impossible. It was the Trojan Horse on a gigantic scale; indeed, he reflected, +the story of the horse with the warriors concealed within it which was dragged +into the heart of Troy by the deluded Trojans themselves might be taken as a +prophetic parable of what had happened to England—if Henson’s theory were +well founded. And this theory certainly squared with what one had heard of +German preparations in Belgium and in France: emplacements for guns ready for +the invader, German manufactories which were really German forts on Belgian +soil, the caverns by the Aisne made ready for the cannon; indeed, Lewis thought +he remembered something about suspicious concrete tennis-courts on the heights +commanding London. But a German army hidden under English ground! It was a +thought to chill the stoutest heart. +</p> + +<p> +And it seemed from that wonder of the burning tree, that the enemy mysteriously +and terribly present at Midlingham, was present also in Meirion. Lewis, +thinking of the country as he knew it, of its wild and desolate hillsides, its +deep woods, its wastes and solitary places, could not but confess that no more +fit region could be found for the deadly enterprise of secret men. Yet, he +thought again, there was but little harm to be done in Meirion to the armies of +England or to their munitionment. They were working for panic terror? Possibly +that might be so; but the camp under the Highway? That should be their first +object, and no harm had been done there. +</p> + +<p> +Lewis did not know that since the panic of the horses men had died terribly in +that camp; that it was now a fortified place, with a deep, broad trench, a +thick tangle of savage barbed wire about it, and a machine-gun planted at each +corner. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br/> +What Mr. Merritt Found</h2> + +<p> +Mr. Merritt began to pick up his health and spirits a good deal. For the first +morning or two of his stay at the doctor’s he contented himself with a very +comfortable deck chair close to the house, where he sat under the shade of an +old mulberry tree beside his wife and watched the bright sunshine on the green +lawns, on the creamy crests of the waves, on the headlands of that glorious +coast, purple even from afar with the imperial glow of the heather, on the +white farmhouses gleaming in the sunlight, high over the sea, far from any +turmoil, from any troubling of men. +</p> + +<p> +The sun was hot, but the wind breathed all the while gently, incessantly, from +the east, and Merritt, who had come to this quiet place, not only from dismay, +but from the stifling and oily airs of the smoky Midland town, said that that +east wind, pure and clear and like well water from the rock, was new life to +him. He ate a capital dinner, at the end of his first day at Porth and took +rosy views. As to what they had been talking about the night before, he said to +Lewis, no doubt there must be trouble of some sort, and perhaps bad trouble; +still, Kitchener would soon put it all right. +</p> + +<p> +So things went on very well. Merritt began to stroll about the garden, which +was full of the comfortable spaces, groves, and surprises that only country +gardens know. To the right of one of the terraces he found an arbor or +summer-house covered with white roses, and he was as pleased as if he had +discovered the Pole. He spent a whole day there, smoking and lounging and +reading a rubbishy sensational story, and declared that the Devonshire roses +had taken many years off his age. Then on the other side of the garden there +was a filbert grove that he had never explored on any of his former visits; and +again there was a find. Deep in the shadow of the filberts was a bubbling well, +issuing from rocks, and all manner of green, dewy ferns growing about it and +above it, and an angelica springing beside it. Merritt knelt on his knees, and +hollowed his hand and drank the well water. He said (over his port) that night +that if all water were like the water of the filbert well the world would turn +to teetotalism. It takes a townsman to relish the manifold and exquisite joys +of the country. +</p> + +<p> +It was not till he began to venture abroad that Merritt found that something +was lacking of the old rich peace that used to dwell in Meirion. He had a +favorite walk which he never neglected, year after year. This walk led along +the cliffs towards Meiros, and then one could turn inland and return to Porth +by deep winding lanes that went over the Allt. So Merritt set out early one +morning and got as far as a sentry-box at the foot of the path that led up to +the cliff. There was a sentry pacing up and down in front of the box, and he +called on Merritt to produce his pass, or to turn back to the main road. +Merritt was a good deal put out, and asked the doctor about this strict guard. +And the doctor was surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t know they had put their bar up there,” he said. “I suppose it’s wise. +We are certainly in the far West here; still, the Germans might slip round and +raid us and do a lot of damage just because Meirion is the last place we should +expect them to go for.” +</p> + +<p> +“But there are no fortifications, surely, on the cliff?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no; I never heard of anything of the kind there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what’s the point of forbidding the public to go on the cliff, then? I +can quite understand putting a sentry on the top to keep a look-out for the +enemy. What I don’t understand is a sentry at the bottom who can’t keep a +look-out for anything, as he can’t see the sea. And why warn the public off the +cliffs? I couldn’t facilitate a German landing by standing on Pengareg, even if +I wanted to.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is curious,” the doctor agreed. “Some military reasons, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +He let the matter drop, perhaps because the matter did not affect him. People +who live in the country all the year round, country doctors certainly, are +little given to desultory walking in search of the picturesque. +</p> + +<p> +Lewis had no suspicion that sentries whose object was equally obscure were +being dotted all over the country. There was a sentry, for example, by the +quarry at Llanfihangel, where the dead woman and the dead sheep had been found +some weeks before. The path by the quarry was used a good deal, and its closing +would have inconvenienced the people of the neighborhood very considerably. But +the sentry had his box by the side of the track and had his orders to keep +everybody strictly to the path, as if the quarry were a secret fort. +</p> + +<p> +It was not known till a month or two ago that one of these sentries was himself +a victim of the terror. The men on duty at this place were given certain very +strict orders, which from the nature of the case, must have seemed to them +unreasonable. For old soldiers, orders are orders; but here was a young bank +clerk, scarcely in training for a couple of months, who had not begun to +appreciate the necessity of hard, literal obedience to an order which seemed to +him meaningless. He found himself on a remote and lonely hillside, he had not +the faintest notion that his every movement was watched; and he disobeyed a +certain instruction that had been given him. The post was found deserted by the +relief; the sentry’s dead body was found at the bottom of the quarry. +</p> + +<p> +This by the way; but Mr. Merritt discovered again and again that things +happened to hamper his walks and his wanderings. Two or three miles from Porth +there is a great marsh made by the Afon river before it falls into the sea, and +here Merritt had been accustomed to botanize mildly. He had learned pretty +accurately the causeways of solid ground that lead through the sea of swamp and +ooze and soft yielding soil, and he set out one hot afternoon determined to +make a thorough exploration of the marsh, and this time to find that rare Bog +Bean, that he felt sure, must grow somewhere in its wide extent. +</p> + +<p> +He got into the by-road that skirts the marsh, and to the gate which he had +always used for entrance. +</p> + +<p> +There was the scene as he had known it always, the rich growth of reeds and +flags and rushes, the mild black cattle grazing on the “islands” of firm turf, +the scented procession of the meadowsweet, the royal glory of the loosestrife, +flaming pennons, crimson and golden, of the giant dock. +</p> + +<p> +But they were bringing out a dead man’s body through the gate. +</p> + +<p> +A laboring man was holding open the gate on the marsh. Merritt, horrified, +spoke to him and asked who it was, and how it had happened. +</p> + +<p> +“They do say he was a visitor at Porth. Somehow he has been drowned in the +marsh, whatever.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s perfectly safe. I’ve been all over it a dozen times.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, indeed, we did always think so. If you did slip by accident, like, and +fall into the water, it was not so deep; it was easy enough to climb out again. +And this gentleman was quite young, to look at him, poor man; and he has come +to Meirion for his pleasure and holiday and found his death in it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he do it on purpose? Is it suicide?” +</p> + +<p> +“They say he had no reasons to do that.” +</p> + +<p> +Here the sergeant of police in charge of the party interposed, according to +orders, which he himself did not understand. +</p> + +<p> +“A terrible thing, sir, to be sure, and a sad pity; and I am sure this is not +the sort of sight you have come to see down in Meirion this beautiful summer. +So don’t you think, sir, that it would be more pleasant like, if you would +leave us to this sad business of ours? I have heard many gentlemen staying in +Porth say that there is nothing to beat the view from the hill over there, not +in the whole of Wales.” +</p> + +<p> +Every one is polite in Meirion, but somehow Merritt understood that, in +English, this speech meant “move on.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Merritt moved back to Porth—he was not in the humor for any idle, +pleasurable strolling after so dreadful a meeting with death. He made some +inquiries in the town about the dead man, but nothing seemed known of him. It +was said that he had been on his honeymoon, that he had been staying at the +Porth Castle Hotel; but the people of the hotel declared that they had never +heard of such a person. Merritt got the local paper at the end of the week; +there was not a word in it of any fatal accident in the marsh. He met the +sergeant of police in the street. That officer touched his helmet with the +utmost politeness and a “hope you are enjoying yourself, sir; indeed you do +look a lot better already”; but as to the poor man who was found drowned or +stifled in the marsh, he knew nothing. +</p> + +<p> +The next day Merritt made up his mind to go to the marsh to see whether he +could find anything to account for so strange a death. What he found was a man +with an armlet standing by the gate. The armlet had the letters “C.W.” on it, +which are understood to mean Coast Watcher. The Watcher said he had strict +instructions to keep everybody away from the marsh. Why? He didn’t know, but +some said that the river was changing its course since the new railway +embankment was built, and the marsh had become dangerous to people who didn’t +know it thoroughly. +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, sir,” he added, “it is part of my orders not to set foot on the other +side of that gate myself, not for one scrag-end of a minute.” +</p> + +<p> +Merritt glanced over the gate incredulously. The marsh looked as it had always +looked; there was plenty of sound, hard ground to walk on; he could see the +track that he used to follow as firm as ever. He did not believe in the story +of the changing course of the river, and Lewis said he had never heard of +anything of the kind. But Merritt had put the question in the middle of general +conversation; he had not led up to it from any discussion of the death in the +marsh, and so the doctor was taken unawares. If he had known of the connection +in Merritt’s mind between the alleged changing of the Afon’s course and the +tragical event in the marsh, no doubt he would have confirmed the official +explanation. He was, above all things, anxious to prevent his sister and her +husband from finding out that the invisible hand of terror that ruled at +Midlingham was ruling also in Meirion. +</p> + +<p> +Lewis himself had little doubt that the man who was found dead in the marsh had +been struck down by the secret agency, whatever it was, that had already +accomplished so much of evil; but it was a chief part of the terror that no one +knew for certain that this or that particular event was to be ascribed to it. +People do occasionally fall over cliffs through their own carelessness, and as +the case of Garcia, the Spanish sailor, showed, cottagers and their wives and +children are now and then the victims of savage and purposeless violence. Lewis +had never wandered about the marsh himself; but Remnant had pottered round it +and about it, and declared that the man who met his death there—his name +was never known, in Porth at all events—must either have committed +suicide by deliberately lying prone in the ooze and stifling himself, or else +must have been held down in it. There were no details available, so it was +clear that the authorities had classified this death with the others; still, +the man might have committed suicide, or he might have had a sudden seizure and +fallen in the slimy water face-downwards. And so on: it was possible to believe +that case A <i>or</i> B <i>or</i> C was in the category of ordinary accidents +or ordinary crimes. But it was not possible to believe that A <i>and</i> B +<i>and</i> C were all in that category. And thus it was to the end, and thus it +is now. We know that the terror reigned, and how it reigned, but there were +many dreadful events ascribed to its rule about which there must always be room +for doubt. +</p> + +<p> +For example, there was the case of the <i>Mary Ann</i>, the rowing-boat which +came to grief in so strange a manner, almost under Merritt’s eyes. In my +opinion he was quite wrong in associating the sorry fate of the boat and her +occupants with a system of signaling by flashlights which he detected or +thought that he detected, on the afternoon in which the <i>Mary Ann</i> was +capsized. I believe his signaling theory to be all nonsense, in spite of the +naturalized German governess who was lodging with her employers in the +suspected house. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt in my own mind that +the boat was overturned and those in it drowned by the work of the terror. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br/> +The Light on the Water</h2> + +<p> +Let it be noted carefully that so far Merritt had not the slightest suspicion +that the terror of Midlingham was quick over Meirion. Lewis had watched and +shepherded him carefully. He had let out no suspicion of what had happened in +Meirion, and before taking his brother-in-law to the club he had passed round a +hint among the members. He did not tell the truth about Midlingham—and +here again is a point of interest, that as the terror deepened the general +public cooperated voluntarily, and, one would say, almost subconsciously, with +the authorities in concealing what they knew from one another—but he gave +out a desirable portion of the truth: that his brother-in-law was “nervy,” not +by any means up to the mark, and that it was therefore desirable that he should +be spared the knowledge of the intolerable and tragic mysteries which were +being enacted all about them. +</p> + +<p> +“He knows about that poor fellow who was found in the marsh,” said Lewis, “and +he has a kind of vague suspicion that there is something out of the common +about the case; but no more than that.” +</p> + +<p> +“A clear case of suggested, or rather commanded suicide,” said Remnant. “I +regard it as a strong confirmation of my theory.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps so,” said the doctor, dreading lest he might have to hear about the Z +Ray all over again. “But please don’t let anything out to him; I want him to +get built up thoroughly before he goes back to Midlingham.” +</p> + +<p> +Then, on the other hand, Merritt was as still as death about the doings of the +Midlands; he hated to think of them, much more to speak of them; and thus, as I +say, he and the men at the Porth Club kept their secrets from one another; and +thus, from the beginning to the end of the terror, the links were not drawn +together. In many cases, no doubt, A and B met every day and talked familiarly, +it may be confidentially, on other matters of all sorts, each having in his +possession half of the truth, which he concealed from the other. So the two +halves were never put together to make a whole. +</p> + +<p> +Merritt, as the doctor guessed, had a kind of uneasy feeling—it scarcely +amounted to a suspicion—as to the business of the marsh; chiefly because +he thought the official talk about the railway embankment and the course of the +river rank nonsense. But finding that nothing more happened, he let the matter +drop from his mind, and settled himself down to enjoy his holiday. +</p> + +<p> +He found to his delight that there were no sentries or watchers to hinder him +from the approach to Larnac Bay, a delicious cove, a place where the ashgrove +and the green meadow and the glistening bracken sloped gently down to red rocks +and firm yellow sands. Merritt remembered a rock that formed a comfortable +seat, and here he established himself of a golden afternoon, and gazed at the +blue of the sea and the crimson bastions and bays of the coast as it bent +inward to Sarnau and swept out again southward to the odd-shaped promontory +called the Dragon’s Head. Merritt gazed on, amused by the antics of the +porpoises who were tumbling and splashing and gamboling a little way out at +sea, charmed by the pure and radiant air that was so different from the oily +smoke that often stood for heaven at Midlingham, and charmed, too, by the white +farmhouses dotted here and there on the heights of the curving coast. +</p> + +<p> +Then he noticed a little row-boat at about two hundred yards from the shore. +There were two or three people aboard, he could not quite make out how many, +and they seemed to be doing something with a line; they were no doubt fishing, +and Merritt (who disliked fish) wondered how people could spoil such an +afternoon, such a sea, such pellucid and radiant air by trying to catch white, +flabby, offensive, evil-smelling creatures that would be excessively nasty when +cooked. He puzzled over this problem and turned away from it to the +contemplation of the crimson headlands. And then he says that he noticed that +signaling was going on. Flashing lights of intense brilliance, he declares, +were coming from one of those farms on the heights of the coast; it was as if +white fire was spouting from it. Merritt was certain, as the light appeared and +disappeared, that some message was being sent, and he regretted that he knew +nothing of heliography. Three short flashes, a long and very brilliant flash, +then two short flashes. Merritt fumbled in his pocket for pencil and paper so +that he might record these signals, and, bringing his eyes down to the sea +level, he became aware, with amazement and horror, that the boat had +disappeared. All that he could see was some vague, dark object far to westward, +running out with the tide. +</p> + +<p> +Now it is certain, unfortunately, that the <i>Mary Ann</i> was capsized and +that two schoolboys and the sailor in charge were drowned. The bones of the +boat were found amongst the rocks far along the coast, and the three bodies +were also washed ashore. The sailor could not swim at all, the boys only a +little, and it needs an exceptionally fine swimmer to fight against the outward +suck of the tide as it rushes past Pengareg Point. +</p> + +<p> +But I have no belief whatever in Merritt’s theory. He held (and still holds, +for all I know), that the flashes of light which he saw coming from Penyrhaul, +the farmhouse on the height, had some connection with the disaster to the +<i>Mary Ann</i>. When it was ascertained that a family were spending their +summer at the farm, and that the governess was a German, though a long +naturalized German, Merritt could not see that there was anything left to argue +about, though there might be many details to discover. But, in my opinion, all +this was a mere mare’s nest; the flashes of brilliant light were caused, no +doubt, by the sun lighting up one window of the farmhouse after the other. +</p> + +<p> +Still, Merritt was convinced from the very first, even before the damning +circumstance of the German governess was brought to light; and on the evening +of the disaster, as Lewis and he sat together after dinner, he was endeavoring +to put what he called the common sense of the matter to the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“If you hear a shot,” said Merritt, “and you see a man fall, you know pretty +well what killed him.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a flutter of wild wings in the room. A great moth beat to and fro and +dashed itself madly against the ceiling, the walls, the glass bookcase. Then a +sputtering sound, a momentary dimming of the lamp. The moth had succeeded in +its mysterious quest. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you tell me,” said Lewis as if he were answering Merritt, “why moths rush +into the flame?” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Lewis had put his question as to the strange habits of the common moth to +Merritt with the deliberate intent of closing the debate on death by +heliograph. The query was suggested, of course, by the incident of the moth in +the lamp, and Lewis thought that he had said, “Oh, shut up!” in a somewhat +elegant manner. And, in fact Merritt looked dignified, remained silent, and +helped himself to port. +</p> + +<p> +That was the end that the doctor had desired. He had no doubt in his own mind +that the affair of the <i>Mary Ann</i> was but one more item in the long +account of horrors that grew larger almost with every day; and he was in no +humor to listen to wild and futile theories as to the manner in which the +disaster had been accomplished. Here was a proof that the terror that was upon +them was mighty not only on the land but on the waters; for Lewis could not see +that the boat could have been attacked by any ordinary means of destruction. +From Merritt’s story, it must have been in shallow water. The shore of Larnac +Bay shelves very gradually, and the Admiralty charts showed the depth of water +two hundred yards out to be only two fathoms; this would be too shallow for a +submarine. And it could not have been shelled, and it could not have been +torpedoed; there was no explosion. The disaster might have been due to +carelessness; boys, he considered, will play the fool anywhere, even in a boat; +but he did not think so; the sailor would have stopped them. And, it may be +mentioned, that the two boys were as a matter of fact extremely steady, +sensible young fellows, not in the least likely to play foolish tricks of any +kind. +</p> + +<p> +Lewis was immersed in these reflections, having successfully silenced his +brother-in-law; he was trying in vain to find some clue to the horrible enigma. +The Midlingham theory of a concealed German force, hiding in places under the +earth, was extravagant enough, and yet it seemed the only solution that +approached plausibility; but then again even a subterranean German host would +hardly account for this wreckage of a boat, floating on a calm sea. And then +what of the tree with the burning in it that had appeared in the garden there a +few weeks ago, and the cloud with a burning in it that had shown over the trees +of the Midland village? +</p> + +<p> +I think I have, already written something of the probable emotions of the +mathematician confronted suddenly with an undoubted two-sided triangle. I said, +if I remember, that he would be forced, in decency, to go mad; and I believe +that Lewis was very near to this point. He felt himself confronted with an +intolerable problem that most instantly demanded solution, and yet, with the +same breath, as it were, denied the possibility of there being any solution. +People were being killed in an inscrutable manner by some inscrutable means, +day after day, and one asked “why” and “how”; and there seemed no answer. In +the Midlands, where every kind of munitionment was manufactured, the +explanation of German agency was plausible; and even if the subterranean notion +was to be rejected as savoring altogether too much of the fairytale, or rather +of the sensational romance, yet it was possible that the backbone of the theory +was true; the Germans might have planted their agents in some way or another in +the midst of our factories. But here in Meirion, what serious effect could be +produced by the casual and indiscriminate slaughter of a couple of schoolboys +in a boat, of a harmless holiday-maker in a marsh? The creation of an +atmosphere of terror and dismay? It was possible, of course, but it hardly +seemed tolerable, in spite of the enormities of Louvain and of the +<i>Lusitania</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Into these meditations, and into the still dignified silence of Merritt broke +the rap on the door of Lewis’s man, and those words which harass the ease of +the country doctor when he tries to take any ease: “You’re wanted in the +surgery, if you please, sir.” Lewis bustled out, and appeared no more that +night. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor had been summoned to a little hamlet on the outskirts of Porth, +separated from it by half a mile or three-quarters of road. One dignifies, +indeed, this settlement without a name in calling it a hamlet; it was a mere +row of four cottages, built about a hundred years ago for the accommodation of +the workers in a quarry long since disused. In one of these cottages the doctor +found a father and mother weeping and crying out to “doctor bach, doctor bach,” +and two frightened children, and one little body, still and dead. It was the +youngest of the three, little Johnnie, and he was dead. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor found that the child had been asphyxiated. He felt the clothes; they +were dry; it was not a case of drowning. He looked at the neck; there was no +mark of strangling. He asked the father how it had happened, and father and +mother, weeping most lamentably, declared they had no knowledge of how their +child had been killed: “unless it was the People that had done it.” The Celtic +fairies are still malignant. Lewis asked what had happened that evening; where +had the child been? +</p> + +<p> +“Was he with his brother and sister? Don’t they know anything about it?” +</p> + +<p> +Reduced into some sort of order from its original piteous confusion, this is +the story that the doctor gathered. +</p> + +<p> +All three children had been well and happy through the day. They had walked in +with the mother, Mrs. Roberts, to Porth on a marketing expedition in the +afternoon; they had returned to the cottage, had had their tea, and afterwards +played about on the road in front of the house. John Roberts had come home +somewhat late from his work, and it was after dusk when the family sat down to +supper. Supper over, the three children went out again to play with other +children from the cottage next door, Mrs. Roberts telling them that they might +have half an hour before going to bed. +</p> + +<p> +The two mothers came to the cottage gates at the same moment and called out to +their children to come along and be quick about it. The two small families had +been playing on the strip of turf across the road, just by the stile into the +fields. The children ran across the road; all of them except Johnnie Roberts. +His brother Willie said that just as their mother called them he heard Johnnie +cry out: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, what is that beautiful shiny thing over the stile?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br/> +The Child and the Moth</h2> + +<p> +The little Roberts’s ran across the road, up the path, and into the lighted +room. Then they noticed that Johnnie had not followed them. Mrs. Roberts was +doing something in the back kitchen, and Mr. Roberts had gone out to the shed +to bring in some sticks for the next morning’s fire. Mrs. Roberts heard the +children run in and went on with her work. The children whispered to one +another that Johnnie would “catch it” when their mother came out of the back +room and found him missing; but they expected he would run in through the open +door any minute. But six or seven, perhaps ten, minutes passed, and there was +no Johnnie. Then the father and mother came into the kitchen together, and saw +that their little boy was not there. +</p> + +<p> +They thought it was some small piece of mischief—that the two other +children had hidden the boy somewhere in the room: in the big cupboard perhaps. +</p> + +<p> +“What have you done with him then?” said Mrs. Roberts. “Come out, you little +rascal, directly in a minute.” +</p> + +<p> +There was no little rascal to come out, and Margaret Roberts, the girl, said +that Johnnie had not come across the road with them: he must be still playing +all by himself by the hedge. +</p> + +<p> +“What did you let him stay like that for?” said Mrs. Roberts. “Can’t I trust +you for two minutes together? Indeed to goodness, you are all of you more +trouble than you are worth.” She went to the open door: +</p> + +<p> +“Johnnie! Come you in directly, or you will be sorry for it. Johnnie!” +</p> + +<p> +The poor woman called at the door. She went out to the gate and called there: +</p> + +<p> +“Come you, little Johnnie. Come you, bachgen, there’s a good boy. I do see you +hiding there.” +</p> + +<p> +She thought he must be hiding in the shadow of the hedge, and that he would +come running and laughing—“he was always such a happy little +fellow”—to her across the road. But no little merry figure danced out of +the gloom of the still, dark night; it was all silence. +</p> + +<p> +It was then, as the mother’s heart began to chill, though she still called +cheerfully to the missing child, that the elder boy told how Johnnie had said +there was something beautiful by the stile: “and perhaps he did climb over, and +he is running now about the meadow, and has lost his way.” +</p> + +<p> +The father got his lantern then, and the whole family went crying and calling +about the meadow, promising cakes and sweets and a fine toy to poor Johnnie if +he would come to them. +</p> + +<p> +They found the little body, under the ashgrove in the middle of the field. He +was quite still and dead, so still that a great moth had settled on his +forehead, fluttering away when they lifted him up. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis heard this story. There was nothing to be done; little to be said to +these most unhappy people. +</p> + +<p> +“Take care of the two that you have left to you,” said the doctor as he went +away. “Don’t let them out of your sight if you can help it. It is dreadful +times that we are living in.” +</p> + +<p> +It is curious to record, that all through these dreadful times the simple +little “season” went through its accustomed course at Porth. The war and its +consequences had somewhat thinned the numbers of the summer visitors; still a +very fair contingent of them occupied the hotels and boarding-houses and +lodging-houses and bathed from the old-fashioned machines on one beach, or from +the new-fashioned tents on the other, and sauntered in the sun, or lay +stretched out in the shade under the trees that grow down almost to the water’s +edge. Porth never tolerated Ethiopians or shows of any kind on its sands, but +“The Rockets” did very well during that summer in their garden entertainment, +given in the castle grounds, and the fit-up companies that came to the Assembly +Rooms are said to have paid their bills to a woman and to a man. +</p> + +<p> +Porth depends very largely on its midland and northern custom, custom of a +prosperous, well-established sort. People who think Llandudno overcrowded and +Colwyn Bay too raw and red and new, come year after year to the placid old town +in the southwest and delight in its peace; and as I say, they enjoyed +themselves much as usual there in the summer of 1915. Now and then they became +conscious, as Mr. Merritt became conscious, that they could not wander about +quite in the old way; but they accepted sentries and coast-watchers and people +who politely pointed out the advantages of seeing the view from this point +rather than from that as very necessary consequences of the dreadful war that +was being waged; nay, as a Manchester man said, after having been turned back +from his favorite walk to Castell Coch, it was gratifying to think that they +were so well looked after. +</p> + +<p> +“So far as I can see,” he added, “there’s nothing to prevent a submarine from +standing out there by Ynys Sant and landing half a dozen men in a collapsible +boat in any of these little coves. And pretty fools we should look, shouldn’t +we, with our throats cut on the sands; or carried back to Germany in the +submarine?” He tipped the coast-watcher half-a-crown. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s right, lad,” he said, “you give us the tip.” +</p> + +<p> +Now here was a strange thing. The north-countryman had his thoughts on elusive +submarines and German raiders; the watcher had simply received instructions to +keep people off the Castell Coch fields, without reason assigned. And there can +be no doubt that the authorities themselves, while they marked out the fields +as in the “terror zone,” gave their orders in the dark and were themselves +profoundly in the dark as to the manner of the slaughter that had been done +there; for if they had understood what had happened, they would have understood +also that their restrictions were useless. +</p> + +<p> +The Manchester man was warned off his walk about ten days after Johnnie +Roberts’s death. The Watcher had been placed at his post because, the night +before, a young farmer had been found by his wife lying in the grass close to +the Castle, with no scar on him, nor any mark of violence, but stone dead. +</p> + +<p> +The wife of the dead man, Joseph Cradock, finding her husband lying motionless +on the dewy turf, went white and stricken up the path to the village and got +two men who bore the body to the farm. Lewis was sent for, and knew, at once +when he saw the dead man that he had perished in the way that the little +Roberts boy had perished—whatever that awful way might be. Cradock had +been asphyxiated; and here again there was no mark of a grip on the throat. It +might have been a piece of work by Burke and Hare, the doctor reflected; a +pitch plaster might have been clapped over the man’s mouth and nostrils and +held there. +</p> + +<p> +Then a thought struck him; his brother-in-law had talked of a new kind of +poison gas that was said to be used against the munition workers in the +Midlands: was it possible that the deaths of the man and the boy were due to +some such instrument? He applied his tests but could find no trace of any gas +having been employed. Carbonic acid gas? A man could not be killed with that in +the open air; to be fatal that required a confined space, such a position as +the bottom of a huge vat or of a well. +</p> + +<p> +He did not know how Cradock had been killed; he confessed it to himself. He had +been suffocated; that was all he could say. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed that the man had gone out at about half-past nine to look after some +beasts. The field in which they were was about five minutes’ walk from the +house. He told his wife he would be back in a quarter of an hour or twenty +minutes. He did not return, and when he had been gone for three-quarters of an +hour Mrs. Cradock went out to look for him. She went into the field where the +beasts were, and everything seemed all right, but there was no trace of +Cradock. She called out; there was no answer. +</p> + +<p> +Now the meadow in which the cattle were pastured is high ground; a hedge +divides it from the fields which fall gently down to the castle and the sea. +Mrs. Cradock hardly seemed able to say why, having failed to find her husband +among his beasts, she turned to the path which led to Castell Coch. She said at +first that she had thought that one of the oxen might have broken through the +hedge and strayed, and that Cradock had perhaps gone after it. And then, +correcting herself, she said: +</p> + +<p> +“There was that; and then there was something else that I could not make out at +all. It seemed to me that the hedge did look different from usual. To be sure, +things do look different at night, and there was a bit of sea mist about, but +somehow it did look odd to me, and I said to myself, ‘have I lost my way, +then?’” +</p> + +<p> +She declared that the shape of the trees in the hedge appeared to have changed, +and besides, it had a look “as if it was lighted up, somehow,” and so she went +on towards the stile to see what all this could be, and when she came near +everything was as usual. She looked over the stile and called and hoped to see +her husband coming towards her or to hear his voice; but there was no answer, +and glancing down the path she saw, or thought she saw, some sort of brightness +on the ground, “a dim sort of light like a bunch of glow-worms in a hedge-bank. +</p> + +<p> +“And so I climbed over the stile and went down the path, and the light seemed +to melt away; and there was my poor husband lying on his back, saying not a +word to me when I spoke to him and touched him.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +So for Lewis the terror blackened and became altogether intolerable, and +others, he perceived, felt as he did. He did not know, he never asked whether +the men at the club had heard of these deaths of the child and the young +farmer; but no one spoke of them. Indeed, the change was evident; at the +beginning of the terror men spoke of nothing else; now it had become all too +awful for ingenious chatter or labored and grotesque theories. And Lewis had +received a letter from his brother-in-law at Midlingham; it contained the +sentence, “I am afraid Fanny’s health has not greatly benefited by her visit to +Porth; there are still several symptoms I don’t at all like.” And this told +him, in a phraseology that the doctor and Merritt had agreed upon, that the +terror remained heavy in the Midland town. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It was soon after the death of Cradock that people began to tell strange tales +of a sound that was to be heard of nights about the hills and valleys to the +northward of Porth. A man who had missed the last train from Meiros and had +been forced to tramp the ten miles between Meiros and Porth seems to have been +the first to hear it. He said he had got to the top of the hill by Tredonoc, +somewhere between half-past ten and eleven, when he first noticed an odd noise +that he could not make out at all; it was like a shout, a long, drawn-out, +dismal wail coming from a great way off, faint with distance. He stopped to +listen, thinking at first that it might be owls hooting in the woods; but it +was different, he said, from that: it was a long cry, and then there was +silence and then it began over again. He could make nothing of it, and feeling +frightened, he did not quite know of what, he walked on briskly and was glad to +see the lights of Porth station. +</p> + +<p> +He told his wife of this dismal sound that night, and she told the neighbors, +and most of them thought that it was “all fancy”—or drink, or the owls +after all. But the night after, two or three people, who had been to some small +merrymaking in a cottage just off the Meiros road, heard the sound as they were +going home, soon after ten. They, too, described it as a long, wailing cry, +indescribably dismal in the stillness of the autumn night; “like the ghost of a +voice,” said one; “as if it came up from the bottom of the earth,” said +another. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br/> +At Treff Loyne Farm</h2> + +<p> +Let it be remembered, again and again, that, all the while that the terror +lasted, there was no common stock of information as to the dreadful things that +were being done. The press had not said one word upon it, there was no +criterion by which the mass of the people could separate fact from mere vague +rumor, no test by which ordinary misadventure or disaster could be +distinguished from the achievements of the secret and awful force that was at +work. +</p> + +<p> +And so with every event of the passing day. A harmless commercial traveler +might show himself in the course of his business in the tumbledown main street +of Meiros and find himself regarded with looks of fear and suspicion as a +possible worker of murder, while it is likely enough that the true agents of +the terror went quite unnoticed. And since the real nature of all this mystery +of death was unknown, it followed easily that the signs and warnings and omens +of it were all the more unknown. Here was horror, there was horror; but there +was no links to join one horror with another; no common basis of knowledge from +which the connection between this horror and that horror might be inferred. +</p> + +<p> +So there was no one who suspected at all that this dismal and hollow sound that +was now heard of nights in the region to the north of Porth, had any relation +at all to the case of the little girl who went out one afternoon to pick purple +flowers and never returned, or to the case of the man whose body was taken out +of the peaty slime of the marsh, or to the case of Cradock, dead in his fields, +with a strange glimmering of light about his body, as his wife reported. And it +is a question as to how far the rumor of this melancholy, nocturnal summons got +abroad at all. Lewis heard of it, as a country doctor hears of most things, +driving up and down the lanes, but he heard of it without much interest, with +no sense that it was in any sort of relation to the terror. Remnant had been +given the story of the hollow and echoing voice of the darkness in a colored +and picturesque form; he employed a Tredonoc man to work in his garden once a +week. The gardener had not heard the summons himself, but he knew a man who had +done so. +</p> + +<p> +“Thomas Jenkins, Pentoppin, he did put his head out late last night to see what +the weather was like, as he was cutting a field of corn the next day, and he +did tell me that when he was with the Methodists in Cardigan he did never hear +no singing eloquence in the chapels that was like to it. He did declare it was +like a wailing of Judgment Day.” +</p> + +<p> +Remnant considered the matter, and was inclined to think that the sound must be +caused by a subterranean inlet of the sea; there might be, he supposed, an +imperfect or half-opened or tortuous blow-hole in the Tredonoc woods, and the +noise of the tide, surging up below, might very well produce that effect of a +hollow wailing, far away. But neither he nor any one else paid much attention +to the matter; save the few who heard the call at dead of night, as it echoed +awfully over the black hills. +</p> + +<p> +The sound had been heard for three or perhaps four nights, when the people +coming out of Tredonoc church after morning service on Sunday noticed that +there was a big yellow sheepdog in the churchyard. The dog, it appeared, had +been waiting for the congregation; for it at once attached itself to them, at +first to the whole body, and then to a group of half a dozen who took the +turning to the right. Two of these presently went off over the fields to their +respective houses, and four strolled on in the leisurely Sunday-morning manner +of the country, and these the dog followed, keeping to heel all the time. The +men were talking hay, corn and markets and paid no attention to the animal, and +so they strolled along the autumn lane till they came to a gate in the hedge, +whence a roughly made farm road went through the fields, and dipped down into +the woods and to Treff Loyne farm. +</p> + +<p> +Then the dog became like a possessed creature. He barked furiously. He ran up +to one of the men and looked up at him, “as if he were begging for his life,” +as the man said, and then rushed to the gate and stood by it, wagging his tail +and barking at intervals. The men stared and laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Whose dog will that be?” said one of them. +</p> + +<p> +“It will be Thomas Griffith’s, Treff Loyne,” said another. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, why doesn’t he go home? Go home then!” He went through the gesture +of picking up a stone from the road and throwing it at the dog. “Go home, then! +Over the gate with you.” +</p> + +<p> +But the dog never stirred. He barked and whined and ran up to the men and then +back to the gate. At last he came to one of them, and crawled and abased +himself on the ground and then took hold of the man’s coat and tried to pull +him in the direction of the gate. The farmer shook the dog off, and the four +went on their way; and the dog stood in the road and watched them and then put +up its head and uttered a long and dismal howl that was despair. +</p> + +<p> +The four farmers thought nothing of it; sheepdogs in the country are dogs to +look after sheep, and their whims and fancies are not studied. But the yellow +dog—he was a kind of degenerate collie—haunted the Tredonoc lanes +from that day. He came to a cottage door one night and scratched at it, and +when it was opened lay down, and then, barking, ran to the garden gate and +waited, entreating, as it seemed, the cottager to follow him. They drove him +away and again he gave that long howl of anguish. It was almost as bad, they +said, as the noise that they had heard a few nights before. And then it +occurred to somebody, so far as I can make out with no particular reference to +the odd conduct of the Treff Loyne sheepdog, that Thomas Griffith had not been +seen for some time past. He had missed market day at Porth, he had not been at +Tredonoc church, where he was a pretty regular attendant on Sunday; and then, +as heads were put together, it appeared that nobody had seen any of the +Griffith family for days and days. +</p> + +<p> +Now in a town, even in a small town, this process of putting heads together is +a pretty quick business. In the country, especially in a countryside of wild +lands and scattered and lonely farms and cottages, the affair takes time. +Harvest was going on, everybody was busy in his own fields, and after the long +day’s hard work neither the farmer nor his men felt inclined to stroll about in +search of news or gossip. A harvester at the day’s end is ready for supper and +sleep and for nothing else. +</p> + +<p> +And so it was late in that week when it was discovered that Thomas Griffith and +all his house had vanished from this world. +</p> + +<p> +I have often been reproached for my curiosity over questions which are +apparently of slight importance, or of no importance at all. I love to inquire, +for instance, into the question of the visibility of a lighted candle at a +distance. Suppose, that is, a candle lighted on a still, dark night in the +country; what is the greatest distance at which you can see that there is a +light at all? And then as to the human voice; what is its carrying distance, +under good conditions, as a mere sound, apart from any matter of making out +words that may be uttered? +</p> + +<p> +They are trivial questions, no doubt, but they have always interested me, and +the latter point has its application to the strange business of Treff Loyne. +That melancholy and hollow sound, that wailing summons that appalled the hearts +of those who heard it was, indeed, a human voice, produced in a very +exceptional manner; and it seems to have been heard at points varying from a +mile and a half to two miles from the farm. I do not know whether this is +anything extraordinary; I do not know whether the peculiar method of production +was calculated to increase or to diminish the carrying power of the sound. +</p> + +<p> +Again and again I have laid emphasis in this story of the terror on the strange +isolation of many of the farms and cottages in Meirion. I have done so in the +effort to convince the townsman of something that he has never known. To the +Londoner a house a quarter of a mile from the outlying suburban lamp, with no +other dwelling within two hundred yards, is a lonely house, a place to fit with +ghosts and mysteries and terrors. How can he understand then, the true +loneliness of the white farmhouses of Meirion, dotted here and there, for the +most part not even on the little lanes and deep winding byways, but set in the +very heart of the fields, or alone on huge bastioned headlands facing the sea, +and whether on the high verge of the sea or on the hills or in the hollows of +the inner country, hidden from the sight of men, far from the sound of any +common call. There is Penyrhaul, for example, the farm from which the foolish +Merritt thought he saw signals of light being made: from seaward it is of +course, widely visible; but from landward, owing partly to the curving and +indented configuration of the bay, I doubt whether any other habitation views +it from a nearer distance than three miles. +</p> + +<p> +And of all these hidden and remote places, I doubt if any is so deeply buried +as Treff Loyne. I have little or no Welsh, I am sorry to say, but I suppose +that the name is corrupted from Trellwyn, or Tref-y-llwyn, “the place in the +grove,” and, indeed, it lies in the very heart of dark, overhanging woods. A +deep, narrow valley runs down from the high lands of the Allt, through these +woods, through steep hillsides of bracken and gorse, right down to the great +marsh, whence Merritt saw the dead man being carried. The valley lies away from +any road, even from that by-road, little better than a bridlepath, where the +four farmers, returning from church were perplexed by the strange antics of the +sheepdog. One cannot say that the valley is overlooked, even from a distance, +for so narrow is it that the ashgroves that rim it on either side seem to meet +and shut it in. I, at all events, have never found any high place from which +Treff Loyne is visible; though, looking down from the Allt, I have seen blue +wood-smoke rising from its hidden chimneys. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the place, then, to which one September afternoon a party went up to +discover what had happened to Griffith and his family. There were half a dozen +farmers, a couple of policemen, and four soldiers, carrying their arms; those +last had been lent by the officer commanding at the camp. Lewis, too, was of +the party; he had heard by chance that no one knew what had become of Griffith +and his family; and he was anxious about a young fellow, a painter, of his +acquaintance, who had been lodging at Treff Loyne all the summer. +</p> + +<p> +They all met by the gate of Tredonoc churchyard, and tramped solemnly along the +narrow lane; all of them, I think, with some vague discomfort of mind, with a +certain shadowy fear, as of men who do not quite know what they may encounter. +Lewis heard the corporal and the three soldiers arguing over their orders. +</p> + +<p> +“The Captain says to me,” muttered the corporal, “‘Don’t hesitate to shoot if +there’s any trouble.’ ‘Shoot what, sir,’ I says. ‘The trouble,’ says he, and +that’s all I could get out of him.” +</p> + +<p> +The men grumbled in reply; Lewis thought he heard some obscure reference to +rat-poison, and wondered what they were talking about. +</p> + +<p> +They came to the gate in the hedge, where the farm road led down to Treff +Loyne. They followed this track, roughly made, with grass growing up between +its loosely laid stones, down by the hedge from field to wood, till at last +they came to the sudden walls of the valley, and the sheltering groves of the +ash trees. Here the way curved down the steep hillside, and bent southward, and +followed henceforward the hidden hollow of the valley, under the shadow of the +trees. +</p> + +<p> +Here was the farm enclosure; the outlying walls of the yard and the barns and +sheds and outhouses. One of the farmers threw open the gate and walked into the +yard, and forthwith began bellowing at the top of his voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Thomas Griffith! Thomas Griffith! Where be you, Thomas Griffith?” +</p> + +<p> +The rest followed him. The corporal snapped out an order over his shoulder, and +there was a rattling metallic noise as the men fixed their bayonets and became +in an instant dreadful dealers out of death, in place of harmless fellows with +a feeling for beer. +</p> + +<p> +“Thomas Griffith!” again bellowed the farmer. +</p> + +<p> +There was no answer to this summons. But they found poor Griffith lying on his +face at the edge of the pond in the middle of the yard. There was a ghastly +wound in his side, as if a sharp stake had been driven into his body. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br/> +The Letter of Wrath</h2> + +<p> +It was a still September afternoon. No wind stirred in the hanging woods that +were dark all about the ancient house of Treff Loyne; the only sound in the dim +air was the lowing of the cattle; they had wandered, it seemed, from the fields +and had come in by the gate of the farmyard and stood there melancholy, as if +they mourned for their dead master. And the horses; four great, heavy, +patient-looking beasts they were there too, and in the lower field the sheep +were standing, as if they waited to be fed. +</p> + +<p> +“You would think they all knew there was something wrong,” one of the soldiers +muttered to another. A pale sun showed for a moment and glittered on their +bayonets. They were standing about the body of poor, dead Griffith, with a +certain grimness growing on their faces and hardening there. Their corporal +snapped something at them again; they were quite ready. Lewis knelt down by the +dead man and looked closely at the great gaping wound in his side. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s been dead a long time,” he said. “A week, two weeks, perhaps. He was +killed by some sharp pointed weapon. How about the family? How many are there +of them? I never attended them.” +</p> + +<p> +“There was Griffith, and his wife, and his son Thomas and Mary Griffith, his +daughter. And I do think there was a gentleman lodging with them this summer.” +</p> + +<p> +That was from one of the farmers. They all looked at one another, this party of +rescue, who knew nothing of the danger that had smitten this house of quiet +people, nothing of the peril which had brought them to this pass of a farmyard +with a dead man in it, and his beasts standing patiently about him, as if they +waited for the farmer to rise up and give them their food. Then the party +turned to the house. It was an old, sixteenth century building, with the +singular round, “Flemish” chimney that is characteristic of Meirion. The walls +were snowy with whitewash, the windows were deeply set and stone mullioned, and +a solid, stone-tiled porch sheltered the doorway from any winds that might +penetrate to the hollow of that hidden valley. The windows were shut tight. +There was no sign of any life or movement about the place. The party of men +looked at one another, and the churchwarden amongst the farmers, the sergeant +of police, Lewis, and the corporal drew together. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it to goodness, doctor?” said the churchwarden. +</p> + +<p> +“I can tell you nothing at all—except that that poor man there has been +pierced to the heart,” said Lewis. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think they are inside and they will shoot us?” said another farmer. He +had no notion of what he meant by “they,” and no one of them knew better than +he. They did not know what the danger was, or where it might strike them, or +whether it was from without or from within. They stared at the murdered man, +and gazed dismally at one another. +</p> + +<p> +“Come!” said Lewis, “we must do something. We must get into the house and see +what is wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but suppose they are at us while we are getting in,” said the sergeant. +“Where shall we be then, Doctor Lewis?” +</p> + +<p> +The corporal put one of his men by the gate at the top of the farmyard, another +at the gate by the bottom of the farmyard, and told them to challenge and +shoot. The doctor and the rest opened the little gate of the front garden and +went up to the porch and stood listening by the door. It was all dead silence. +Lewis took an ash stick from one of the farmers and beat heavily three times on +the old, black, oaken door studded with antique nails. +</p> + +<p> +He struck three thundering blows, and then they all waited. There was no answer +from within. He beat again, and still silence. He shouted to the people within, +but there was no answer. They all turned and looked at one another, that party +of quest and rescue who knew not what they sought, what enemy they were to +encounter. There was an iron ring on the door. Lewis turned it but the door +stood fast; it was evidently barred and bolted. The sergeant of police called +out to open, but again there was no answer. +</p> + +<p> +They consulted together. There was nothing for it but to blow the door open, +and some one of them called in a loud voice to anybody that might be within to +stand away from the door, or they would be killed. And at this very moment the +yellow sheepdog came bounding up the yard from the woods and licked their hands +and fawned on them and barked joyfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed now,” said one of the farmers; “he did know that there was something +amiss. A pity it was, Thomas Williams, that we did not follow him when he +implored us last Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +The corporal motioned the rest of the party back, and they stood looking +fearfully about them at the entrance to the porch. The corporal disengaged his +bayonet and shot into the keyhole, calling out once more before he fired. He +shot and shot again; so heavy and firm was the ancient door, so stout its bolts +and fastenings. At last he had to fire at the massive hinges, and then they all +pushed together and the door lurched open and fell forward. The corporal raised +his left hand and stepped back a few paces. He hailed his two men at the top +and bottom of the farmyard. They were all right, they said. And so the party +climbed and struggled over the fallen door into the passage, and into the +kitchen of the farmhouse. +</p> + +<p> +Young Griffith was lying dead before the hearth, before a dead fire of white +wood ashes. They went on towards the “parlor,” and in the doorway of the room +was the body of the artist, Secretan, as if he had fallen in trying to get to +the kitchen. Upstairs the two women, Mrs. Griffith and her daughter, a girl of +eighteen, were lying together on the bed in the big bedroom, clasped in each +others’ arms. +</p> + +<p> +They went about the house, searched the pantries, the back kitchen and the +cellars; there was no life in it. +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” said Dr. Lewis, when they came back to the big kitchen, “look! It is as +if they had been besieged. Do you see that piece of bacon, half gnawed +through?” +</p> + +<p> +Then they found these pieces of bacon, cut from the sides on the kitchen wall, +here and there about the house. There was no bread in the place, no milk, no +water. +</p> + +<p> +“And,” said one of the farmers, “they had the best water here in all Meirion. +The well is down there in the wood; it is most famous water. The old people did +use to call it Ffynnon Teilo; it was Saint Teilo’s Well, they did say.” +</p> + +<p> +“They must have died of thirst,” said Lewis. “They have been dead for days and +days.” +</p> + +<p> +The group of men stood in the big kitchen and stared at one another, a dreadful +perplexity in their eyes. The dead were all about them, within the house and +without it; and it was in vain to ask why they had died thus. The old man had +been killed with the piercing thrust of some sharp weapon; the rest had +perished, it seemed probable, of thirst; but what possible enemy was this that +besieged the farm and shut in its inhabitants? There was no answer. +</p> + +<p> +The sergeant of police spoke of getting a cart and taking the bodies into +Porth, and Dr. Lewis went into the parlor that Secretan had used as a +sitting-room, intending to gather any possessions or effects of the dead artist +that he might find there. Half a dozen portfolios were piled up in one corner, +there were some books on a side table, a fishing-rod and basket behind the +door—that seemed all. No doubt there would be clothes and such matters +upstairs, and Lewis was about to rejoin the rest of the party in the kitchen, +when he looked down at some scattered papers lying with the books on the side +table. On one of the sheets he read to his astonishment the words: “Dr. James +Lewis, Porth.” This was written in a staggering trembling scrawl, and examining +the other leaves he saw that they were covered with writing. +</p> + +<p> +The table stood in a dark corner of the room, and Lewis gathered up the sheets +of paper and took them to the window-ledge and began to read, amazed at certain +phrases that had caught his eye. But the manuscript was in disorder; as if the +dead man who had written it had not been equal to the task of gathering the +leaves into their proper sequence; it was some time before the doctor had each +page in its place. This was the statement that he read, with ever-growing +wonder, while a couple of the farmers were harnessing one of the horses in the +yard to a cart, and the others were bringing down the dead women. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“I do not think that I can last much longer. We shared out the last drops of +water a long time ago. I do not know how many days ago. We fall asleep and +dream and walk about the house in our dreams, and I am often not sure whether I +am awake or still dreaming, and so the days and nights are confused in my mind. +I awoke not long ago, at least I suppose I awoke and found I was lying in the +passage. I had a confused feeling that I had had an awful dream which seemed +horribly real, and I thought for a moment what a relief it was to know that it +wasn’t true, whatever it might have been. I made up my mind to have a good long +walk to freshen myself up, and then I looked round and found that I had been +lying on the stones of the passage; and it all came back to me. There was no +walk for me. +</p> + +<p> +“I have not seen Mrs. Griffith or her daughter for a long while. They said they +were going upstairs to have a rest. I heard them moving about the room at +first, now I can hear nothing. Young Griffith is lying in the kitchen, before +the hearth. He was talking to himself about the harvest and the weather when I +last went into the kitchen. He didn’t seem to know I was there, as he went +gabbling on in a low voice very fast, and then he began to call the dog, Tiger. +</p> + +<p> +“There seems no hope for any of us. We are in the dream of death....” +</p> + +<p> +Here the manuscript became unintelligible for half a dozen lines. Secretan had +written the words “dream of death” three or four times over. He had begun a +fresh word and had scratched it out and then followed strange, unmeaning +characters, the script, as Lewis thought, of a terrible language. And then the +writing became clear, clearer than it was at the beginning of the manuscript, +and the sentences flowed more easily, as if the cloud on Secretan’s mind had +lifted for a while. There was a fresh start, as it were, and the writer began +again, in ordinary letter-form: +</p> + +<p> +“DEAR LEWIS, +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you will excuse all this confusion and wandering. I intended to begin a +proper letter to you, and now I find all that stuff that you have been +reading—if this ever gets into your hands. I have not the energy even to +tear it up. If you read it you will know to what a sad pass I had come when it +was written. It looks like delirium or a bad dream, and even now, though my +mind seems to have cleared up a good deal, I have to hold myself in tightly to +be sure that the experiences of the last days in this awful place are true, +real things, not a long nightmare from which I shall wake up presently and find +myself in my rooms at Chelsea. +</p> + +<p> +“I have said of what I am writing, ‘if it ever gets into your hands,’ and I am +not at all sure that it ever will. If what is happening here is happening +everywhere else, then I suppose, the world is coming to an end. I cannot +understand it, even now I can hardly believe it. I know that I dream such wild +dreams and walk in such mad fancies that I have to look out and look about me +to make sure that I am not still dreaming. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you remember that talk we had about two months ago when I dined with you? +We got on, somehow or other, to space and time, and I think we agreed that as +soon as one tried to reason about space and time one was landed in a maze of +contradictions. You said something to the effect that it was very curious but +this was just like a dream. ‘A man will sometimes wake himself from his crazy +dream,’ you said, ‘by realizing that he is thinking nonsense.’ And we both +wondered whether these contradictions that one can’t avoid if one begins to +think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a +dream, and the moon and the stars bits of nightmare. I have often thought over +that lately. I kick at the walls as Dr. Johnson kicked at the stone, to make +sure that the things about me are there. And then that other question gets into +my mind—is the world really coming to an end, the world as we have always +known it; and what on earth will this new world be like? I can’t imagine it; +it’s a story like Noah’s Ark and the Flood. People used to talk about the end +of the world and fire, but no one ever thought of anything like this. +</p> + +<p> +“And then there’s another thing that bothers me. Now and then I wonder whether +we are not all mad together in this house. In spite of what I see and know, or, +perhaps, I should say, because what I see and know is so impossible, I wonder +whether we are not all suffering from a delusion. Perhaps we are our own +gaolers, and we are really free to go out and live. Perhaps what we think we +see is not there at all. I believe I have heard of whole families going mad +together, and I may have come under the influence of the house, having lived in +it for the last four months. I know there have been people who have been kept +alive by their keepers forcing food down their throats, because they are quite +sure that their throats are closed, so that they feel they are unable to +swallow a morsel. I wonder now and then whether we are all like this in Treff +Loyne; yet in my heart I feel sure that it is not so. +</p> + +<p> +“Still, I do not want to leave a madman’s letter behind me, and so I will not +tell you the full story of what I have seen, or believe I have seen. If I am a +sane man you will be able to fill in the blanks for yourself from your own +knowledge. If I am mad, burn the letter and say nothing about it. Or +perhaps—and indeed, I am not quite sure—I may wake up and hear Mary +Griffith calling to me in her cheerful sing-song that breakfast will be ready +‘directly, in a minute,’ and I shall enjoy it and walk over to Porth and tell +you the queerest, most horrible dream that a man ever had, and ask what I had +better take. +</p> + +<p> +“I think that it was on a Tuesday that we first noticed that there was +something queer about, only at the time we didn’t know that there was anything +really queer in what we noticed. I had been out since nine o’clock in the +morning trying to paint the marsh, and I found it a very tough job. I came home +about five or six o’clock and found the family at Treff Loyne laughing at old +Tiger, the sheepdog. He was making short runs from the farmyard to the door of +the house, barking, with quick, short yelps. Mrs. Griffith and Miss Griffith +were standing by the porch, and the dog would go to them, look in their faces, +and then run up the farmyard to the gate, and then look back with that eager +yelping bark, as if he were waiting for the women to follow him. Then, again +and again, he ran up to them and tugged at their skirts as if he would pull +them by main force away from the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Then the men came home from the fields and he repeated this performance. The +dog was running all up and down the farmyard, in and out of the barn and sheds +yelping, barking; and always with that eager run to the person he addressed, +and running away directly, and looking back as, if to see whether we were +following him. When the house door was shut and they all sat down to supper, he +would give them no peace, till at last they turned him out of doors. And then +he sat in the porch and scratched at the door with his claws, barking all the +while. When the daughter brought in my meal, she said: ‘We can’t think what is +come to old Tiger, and indeed, he has always been a good dog, too.’ +</p> + +<p> +“The dog barked and yelped and whined and scratched at the door all through the +evening. They let him in once, but he seemed to have become quite frantic. He +ran up to one member of the family after another; his eyes were bloodshot and +his mouth was foaming, and he tore at their clothes till they drove him out +again into the darkness. Then he broke into a long, lamentable howl of anguish, +and we heard no more of him.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br/> +The Last Words of Mr. Secretan</h2> + +<p> +“I slept ill that night. I awoke again and again from uneasy dreams, and I +seemed in my sleep to hear strange calls and noises and a sound of murmurs and +beatings on the door. There were deep, hollow voices, too, that echoed in my +sleep, and when I woke I could hear the autumn wind, mournful, on the hills +above us. I started up once with a dreadful scream in my ears; but then the +house was all still, and I fell again into uneasy sleep. +</p> + +<p> +“It was soon after dawn when I finally roused myself. The people in the house +were talking to each other in high voices, arguing about something that I did +not understand. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It is those damned gipsies, I tell you,’ said old Griffith. +</p> + +<p> +“‘What would they do a thing like that for?’ asked Mrs. Griffith. ‘If it was +stealing now—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘It is more likely that John Jenkins has done it out of spite,’ said the son. +‘He said that he would remember you when we did catch him poaching.’ +</p> + +<p> +“They seemed puzzled and angry, so far as I could make out, but not at all +frightened. I got up and began to dress. I don’t think I looked out of the +window. The glass on my dressing-table is high and broad, and the window is +small; one would have to poke one’s head round the glass to see anything. +</p> + +<p> +“The voices were still arguing downstairs. I heard the old man say, ‘Well, +here’s for a beginning anyhow,’ and then the door slammed. +</p> + +<p> +“A minute later the old man shouted, I think, to his son. Then there was a +great noise which I will not describe more particularly, and a dreadful +screaming and crying inside the house and a sound of rushing feet. They all +cried out at once to each other. I heard the daughter crying, ‘it is no good, +mother, he is dead, indeed they have killed him,’ and Mrs. Griffith screaming +to the girl to let her go. And then one of them rushed out of the kitchen and +shot the great bolts of oak across the door, just as something beat against it +with a thundering crash. +</p> + +<p> +“I ran downstairs. I found them all in wild confusion, in an agony of grief and +horror and amazement. They were like people who had seen something so awful +that they had gone mad. +</p> + +<p> +“I went to the window looking out on the farmyard. I won’t tell you all that I +saw. But I saw poor old Griffith lying by the pond, with the blood pouring out +of his side. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to go out to him and bring him in. But they told me that he must be +stone dead, and such things also that it was quite plain that any one who went +out of the house would not live more than a moment. We could not believe it, +even as we gazed at the body of the dead man; but it was there. I used to +wonder sometimes what one would feel like if one saw an apple drop from the +tree and shoot up into the air and disappear. I think I know now how one would +feel. +</p> + +<p> +“Even then we couldn’t believe that it would last. We were not seriously afraid +for ourselves. We spoke of getting out in an hour or two, before dinner anyhow. +It couldn’t last, because it was impossible. Indeed, at twelve o’clock young +Griffith said he would go down to the well by the back way and draw another +pail of water. I went to the door and stood by it. He had not gone a dozen +yards before they were on him. He ran for his life, and we had all we could do +to bar the door in time. And then I began to get frightened. +</p> + +<p> +“Still we could not believe in it. Somebody would come along shouting in an +hour or two and it would all melt away and vanish. There could not be any real +danger. There was plenty of bacon in the house, and half the weekly baking of +loaves and some beer in the cellar and a pound or so of tea, and a whole +pitcher of water that had been drawn from the well the night before. We could +do all right for the day and in the morning it would have all gone away. +</p> + +<p> +“But day followed day and it was still there. I knew Treff Loyne was a lonely +place—that was why I had gone there, to have a long rest from all the +jangle and rattle and turmoil of London, that makes a man alive and kills him +too. I went to Treff Loyne because it was buried in the narrow valley under the +ash trees, far away from any track. There was not so much as a footpath that +was near it; no one ever came that way. Young Griffith had told me that it was +a mile and a half to the nearest house, and the thought of the silent peace and +retirement of the farm used to be a delight to me. +</p> + +<p> +“And now this thought came back without delight, with terror. Griffith thought +that a shout might be heard on a still night up away on the Allt, ‘if a man was +listening for it,’ he added, doubtfully. My voice was clearer and stronger than +his, and on the second night I said I would go up to my bedroom and call for +help through the open window. I waited till it was all dark and still, and +looked out through the window before opening it. And then I saw over the ridge +of the long barn across the yard what looked like a tree, though I knew there +was no tree there. It was a dark mass against the sky, with wide-spread boughs, +a tree of thick, dense growth. I wondered what this could be, and I threw open +the window, not only because I was going to call for help, but because I wanted +to see more clearly what the dark growth over the barn really was. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw in the depth of the dark of it points of fire, and colors in light, all +glowing and moving, and the air trembled. I stared out into the night, and the +dark tree lifted over the roof of the barn and rose up in the air and floated +towards me. I did not move till at the last moment when it was close to the +house; and then I saw what it was and banged the window down only just in time. +I had to fight, and I saw the tree that was like a burning cloud rise up in the +night and sink again and settle over the barn. +</p> + +<p> +“I told them downstairs of this. They sat with white faces, and Mrs. Griffith +said that ancient devils were let loose and had come out of the trees and out +of the old hills because of the wickedness that was on the earth. She began to +murmur something to herself, something that sounded to me like broken-down +Latin. +</p> + +<p> +“I went up to my room again an hour later, but the dark tree swelled over the +barn. Another day went by, and at dusk I looked out, but the eyes of fire were +watching me. I dared not open the window. +</p> + +<p> +“And then I thought of another plan. There was the great old fireplace, with +the round Flemish chimney going high above the house. If I stood beneath it and +shouted I thought perhaps the sound might be carried better than if I called +out of the window; for all I knew the round chimney might act as a sort of +megaphone. Night after night, then, I stood in the hearth and called for help +from nine o’clock to eleven. I thought of the lonely place, deep in the valley +of the ashtrees, of the lonely hills and lands about it. I thought of the +little cottages far away and hoped that my voice might reach to those within +them. I thought of the winding lane high on the Allt, and of the few men that +came there of nights; but I hoped that my cry might come to one of them. +</p> + +<p> +“But we had drunk up the beer, and we would only let ourselves have water by +little drops, and on the fourth night my throat was dry, and I began to feel +strange and weak; I knew that all the voice I had in my lungs would hardly +reach the length of the field by the farm. +</p> + +<p> +“It was then we began to dream of wells and fountains, and water coming very +cold, in little drops, out of rocky places in the middle of a cool wood. We had +given up all meals; now and then one would cut a lump from the sides of bacon +on the kitchen wall and chew a bit of it, but the saltness was like fire. +</p> + +<p> +“There was a great shower of rain one night. The girl said we might open a +window and hold out bowls and basins and catch the rain. I spoke of the cloud +with burning eyes. She said ‘we will go to the window in the dairy at the back, +and one of us can get some water at all events.’ She stood up with her basin on +the stone slab in the dairy and looked out and heard the plashing of the rain, +falling very fast. And she unfastened the catch of the window and had just +opened it gently with one hand, for about an inch, and had her basin in the +other hand. ‘And then,’ said she, ‘there was something that began to tremble +and shudder and shake as it did when we went to the Choral Festival at St. +Teilo’s, and the organ played, and there was the cloud and the burning close +before me.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And then we began to dream, as I say. I woke up in my sitting-room one hot +afternoon when the sun was shining, and I had been looking and searching in my +dream all through the house, and I had gone down to the old cellar that wasn’t +used, the cellar with the pillars and the vaulted room, with an iron pike in my +hand. Something said to me that there was water there, and in my dream I went +to a heavy stone by the middle pillar and raised it up, and there beneath was a +bubbling well of cold, clear water, and I had just hollowed my hand to drink it +when I woke. I went into the kitchen and told young Griffith. I said I was sure +there was water there. He shook his head, but he took up the great kitchen +poker and we went down to the old cellar. I showed him the stone by the pillar, +and he raised it up. But there was no well. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know, I reminded myself of many people whom I have met in life? I would +not be convinced. I was sure that, after all, there was a well there. They had +a butcher’s cleaver in the kitchen and I took it down to the old cellar and +hacked at the ground with it. The others didn’t interfere with me. We were +getting past that. We hardly ever spoke to one another. Each one would be +wandering about the house, upstairs and downstairs, each one of us, I suppose, +bent on his own foolish plan and mad design, but we hardly ever spoke. Years +ago, I was an actor for a bit, and I remember how it was on first nights; the +actors treading softly up and down the wings, by their entrance, their lips +moving and muttering over the words of their parts, but without a word for one +another. So it was with us. I came upon young Griffith one evening evidently +trying to make a subterranean passage under one of the walls of the house. I +knew he was mad, as he knew I was mad when he saw me digging for a well in the +cellar; but neither said anything to the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Now we are past all this. We are too weak. We dream when we are awake and when +we dream we think we wake. Night and day come and go and we mistake one for +another; I hear Griffith murmuring to himself about the stars when the sun is +high at noonday, and at midnight I have found myself thinking that I walked in +bright sunlit meadows beside cold, rushing streams that flowed from high rocks. +</p> + +<p> +“Then at the dawn figures in black robes, carrying lighted tapers in their +hands pass slowly about and about; and I hear great rolling organ music that +sounds as if some tremendous rite were to begin, and voices crying in an +ancient song shrill from the depths of the earth. +</p> + +<p> +“Only a little while ago I heard a voice which sounded as if it were at my very +ears, but rang and echoed and resounded as if it were rolling and reverberated +from the vault of some cathedral, chanting in terrible modulations. I heard the +words quite clearly. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“<i>Incipit liber iræ Domini Dei nostri.</i> (Here beginneth The Book of the +Wrath of the Lord our God.) +</p> + +<p> +“And then the voice sang the word <i>Aleph,</i> prolonging it, it seemed +through ages, and a light was extinguished as it began the chapter: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>In that day, saith the Lord, there shall be a cloud over the land, and in +the cloud a burning and a shape of fire, and out of the cloud shall issue forth +my messengers; they shall run all together, they shall not turn aside; this +shall be a day of exceeding bitterness, without salvation. And on every high +hill, saith the Lord of Hosts, I will set my sentinels, and my armies shall +encamp in the place of every valley; in the house that is amongst rushes I will +execute judgment, and in vain shall they fly for refuge to the munitions of the +rocks. In the groves of the woods, in the places where the leaves are as a tent +above them, they shall find the sword of the slayer; and they that put their +trust in walled cities shall be confounded. Woe unto the armed man, woe unto +him that taketh pleasure in the strength of his artillery, for a little thing +shall smite him, and by one that hath no might shall he be brought down into +the dust. That which is low shall be set on high; I will make the lamb and the +young sheep to be as the lion from the swellings of Jordan; they shall not +spare, saith the Lord, and the doves shall be as eagles on the hill Engedi; +none shall be found that may abide the onset of their battle.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Even now I can hear the voice rolling far away, as if it came from the altar +of a great church and I stood at the door. There are lights very far away in +the hollow of a vast darkness, and one by one they are put out. I hear a voice +chanting again with that endless modulation that climbs and aspires to the +stars, and shines there, and rushes down to the dark depths of the earth, again +to ascend; the word is <i>Zain.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Here the manuscript lapsed again, and finally into utter, lamentable confusion. +There were scrawled lines wavering across the page on which Secretan seemed to +have been trying to note the unearthly music that swelled in his dying ears. As +the scrapes and scratches of ink showed, he had tried hard to begin a new +sentence. The pen had dropped at last out of his hand upon the paper, leaving a +blot and a smear upon it. +</p> + +<p> +Lewis heard the tramp of feet along the passage; they were carrying out the +dead to the cart. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br/> +The End of the Terror</h2> + +<p> +Dr. Lewis maintained that we should never begin to understand the real +significance of life until we began to study just those aspects of it which we +now dismiss and overlook as utterly inexplicable, and therefore, unimportant. +</p> + +<p> +We were discussing a few months ago the awful shadow of the terror which at +length had passed away from the land. I had formed my opinion, partly from +observation, partly from certain facts which had been communicated to me, and +the passwords having been exchanged, I found that Lewis had come by very +different ways to the same end. +</p> + +<p> +“And yet,” he said, “it is not a true end, or rather, it is like all the ends +of human inquiry, it leads one to a great mystery. We must confess that what +has happened might have happened at any time in the history of the world. It +did not happen till a year ago as a matter of fact, and therefore we made up +our minds that it never could happen; or, one would better say, it was outside +the range even of imagination. But this is our way. Most people are quite sure +that the Black Death—otherwise the Plague—will never invade Europe +again. They have made up their complacent minds that it was due to dirt and bad +drainage. As a matter of fact the Plague had nothing to do with dirt or with +drains; and there is nothing to prevent its ravaging England to-morrow. But if +you tell people so, they won’t believe you. They won’t believe in anything that +isn’t there at the particular moment when you are talking to them. As with the +Plague, so with the Terror. We could not believe that such a thing could ever +happen. Remnant said, truly enough, that whatever it was, it was outside +theory, outside our theory. Flatland cannot believe in the cube or the sphere.” +</p> + +<p> +I agreed with all this. I added that sometimes the world was incapable of +seeing, much less believing, that which was before its own eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” I said, “at any eighteenth century print of a Gothic cathedral. You +will find that the trained artistic eye even could not behold in any true sense +the building that was before it. I have seen an old print of Peterborough +Cathedral that looks as if the artist had drawn it from a clumsy model, +constructed of bent wire and children’s bricks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly; because Gothic was outside the æsthetic theory (and therefore +vision) of the time. You can’t believe what you don’t see: rather, you can’t +see what you don’t believe. It was so during the time of the Terror. All this +bears out what Coleridge said as to the necessity of having the idea before the +facts could be of any service to one. Of course, he was right; mere facts, +without the correlating idea, are nothing and lead to no conclusion. We had +plenty of facts, but we could make nothing of them. I went home at the tail of +that dreadful procession from Treff Loyne in a state of mind very near to +madness. I heard one of the soldiers saying to the other: ‘There’s no rat +that’ll spike a man to the heart, Bill.’ I don’t know why, but I felt that if I +heard any more of such talk as that I should go crazy; it seemed to me that the +anchors of reason were parting. I left the party and took the short cut across +the fields into Porth. I looked up Davies in the High Street and arranged with +him that he should take on any cases I might have that evening, and then I went +home and gave my man his instructions to send people on. And then I shut myself +up to think it all out—if I could. +</p> + +<p> +“You must not suppose that my experiences of that afternoon had afforded me the +slightest illumination. Indeed, if it had not been that I had seen poor old +Griffith’s body lying pierced in his own farmyard, I think I should have been +inclined to accept one of Secretan’s hints, and to believe that the whole +family had fallen a victim to a collective delusion or hallucination, and had +shut themselves up and died of thirst through sheer madness. I think there have +been such cases. It’s the insanity of inhibition, the belief that you can’t do +something which you are really perfectly capable of doing. But; I had seen the +body of the murdered man and the wound that had killed him. +</p> + +<p> +“Did the manuscript left by Secretan give me no hint? Well, it seemed to me to +make confusion worse confounded. You have seen it; you know that in certain +places it is evidently mere delirium, the wanderings of a dying mind. How was I +to separate the facts from the phantasms—lacking the key to the whole +enigma. Delirium is often a sort of cloud-castle, a sort of magnified and +distorted shadow of actualities, but it is a very difficult thing, almost an +impossible thing, to reconstruct the real house from the distortion of it, +thrown on the clouds of the patient’s brain. You see, Secretan in writing that +extraordinary document almost insisted on the fact that he was not in his +proper sense; that for days he had been part asleep, part awake, part +delirious. How was one to judge his statement, to separate delirium from fact? +In one thing he stood confirmed; you remember he speaks of calling for help up +the old chimney of Treff Loyne; that did seem to fit in with the tales of a +hollow, moaning cry that had been heard upon the Allt: so far one could take +him as a recorder of actual experiences. And I looked in the old cellars of the +farm and found a frantic sort of rabbit-hole dug by one of the pillars; again +he was confirmed. But what was one to make of that story of the chanting voice, +and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the chapter out of some unknown +Minor Prophet? When one has the key it is easy enough to sort out the facts, or +the hints of facts from the delusions; but I hadn’t the key on that September +evening. I was forgetting the ‘tree’ with lights and fires in it; that, I +think, impressed me more than anything with the feeling that Secretan’s story +was, in the main, a true story. I had seen a like appearance down there in my +own garden; but what was it? +</p> + +<p> +“Now, I was saying that, paradoxically, it is only by the inexplicable things +that life can be explained. We are apt to say, you know, ‘a very odd +coincidence’ and pass the matter by, as if there were no more to be said, or as +if that were the end of it. Well, I believe that the only real path lies +through the blind alleys.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, this is an instance of what I mean. I told you about Merritt, my +brother-in-law, and the capsizing of that boat, the <i>Mary Ann</i>. He had +seen, he said, signal lights flashing from one of the farms on the coast, and +he was quite certain that the two things were intimately connected as cause and +effect. I thought it all nonsense, and I was wondering how I was going to shut +him up when a big moth flew into the room through that window, fluttered about, +and succeeded in burning itself alive in the lamp. That gave me my cue; I asked +Merritt if he knew why moths made for lamps or something of the kind; I thought +it would be a hint to him that I was sick of his flashlights and his half-baked +theories. So it was—he looked sulky and held his tongue. +</p> + +<p> +“But a few minutes later I was called out by a man who had found his little boy +dead in a field near his cottage about an hour before. The child was so still, +they said, that a great moth had settled on his forehead and only fluttered +away when they lifted up the body. It was absolutely illogical; but it was this +odd ‘coincidence’ of the moth in my lamp and the moth on the dead boy’s +forehead that first set me on the track. I can’t say that it guided me in any +real sense; it was more like a great flare of red paint on a wall; it rang up +my attention, if I may say so; it was a sort of shock like a bang on the big +drum. No doubt Merritt was talking great nonsense that evening so far as his +particular instance went; the flashes of light from the farm had nothing to do +with the wreck of the boat. But his general principle was sound; when you hear +a gun go off and see a man fall it is idle to talk of ‘a mere coincidence.’ I +think a very interesting book might be written on this question: I would call +it ‘A Grammar of Coincidence.’ +</p> + +<p> +“But as you will remember, from having read my notes on the matter, I was +called in about ten days later to see a man named Cradock, who had been found +in a field near his farm quite dead. This also was at night. His wife found +him, and there were some very queer things in her story. She said that the +hedge of the field looked as if it were changed; she began to be afraid that +she had lost her way and got into the wrong field. Then she said the hedge was +lighted up as if there were a lot of glow-worms in it, and when she peered over +the stile there seemed to be some kind of glimmering upon the ground, and then +the glimmering melted away, and she found her husband’s body near where this +light had been. Now this man Cradock had been suffocated just as the little boy +Roberts had been suffocated, and as that man in the Midlands who took a short +cut one night had been suffocated. Then I remembered that poor Johnnie Roberts +had called out about ‘something shiny’ over the stile just before he played +truant. Then, on my part, I had to contribute the very remarkable sight I +witnessed here, as I looked down over the garden; the appearance as of a +spreading tree where I knew there was no such tree, and then the shining and +burning of lights and moving colors. Like the poor child and Mrs. Cradock, I +had seen something shiny, just as some man in Stratfordshire had seen a dark +cloud with points of fire in it floating over the trees. And Mrs. Cradock +thought that the shape of the trees in the hedge had changed. +</p> + +<p> +“My mind almost uttered the word that was wanted; but you see the difficulties. +This set of circumstances could not, so far as I could see, have any relation +with the other circumstances of the Terror. How could I connect all this with +the bombs and machine-guns of the Midlands, with the armed men who kept watch +about the munition shops by day and night. Then there was the long list of +people here who had fallen over the cliffs or into the quarry; there were the +cases of the men stifled in the slime of the marshes; there was the affair of +the family murdered in front of their cottage on the Highway; there was the +capsized <i>Mary Ann</i>. I could not see any thread that could bring all these +incidents together; they seemed to me to be hopelessly disconnected. I could +not make out any relation between the agency that beat out the brains of the +Williams’s and the agency that overturned the boat. I don’t know, but I think +it’s very likely if nothing more had happened that I should have put the whole +thing down as an unaccountable series of crimes and accidents which chanced to +occur in Meirion in the summer of 1915. Well, of course, that would have been +an impossible standpoint in view of certain incidents in Merritt’s story. +Still, if one is confronted by the insoluble, one lets it go at last. If the +mystery is inexplicable, one pretends that there isn’t any mystery. That is the +justification for what is called free thinking. +</p> + +<p> +“Then came that extraordinary business of Treff Loyne. I couldn’t put that on +one side. I couldn’t pretend that nothing strange or out of the way had +happened. There was no getting over it or getting round it. I had seen with my +eyes that there was a mystery, and a most horrible mystery. I have forgotten my +logic, but one might say that Treff Loyne demonstrated the existence of a +mystery in the figure of Death. +</p> + +<p> +“I took it all home, as I have told you, and sat down for the evening before +it. It appalled me, not only by its horror, but here again by the discrepancy +between its terms. Old Griffith, so far as I could judge, had been killed by +the thrust of a pike or perhaps of a sharpened stake: how could one relate this +to the burning tree that had floated over the ridge of the barn. It was as if I +said to you: ‘here is a man drowned, and here is a man burned alive: show that +each death was caused by the same agency!’ And the moment that I left this +particular case of Treff Loyne, and tried to get some light on it from other +instances of the Terror, I would think of the man in the midlands who heard the +feet of a thousand men rustling in the wood, and their voices as if dead men +sat up in their bones and talked. And then I would say to myself, ‘and how +about that boat overturned in a calm sea?’ There seemed no end to it, no hope +of any solution. +</p> + +<p> +“It was, I believe, a sudden leap of the mind that liberated me from the +tangle. It was quite beyond logic. I went back to that evening when Merritt was +boring me with his flashlights, to the moth in the candle, and to the moth on +the forehead of poor Johnnie Roberts. There was no sense in it; but I suddenly +determined that the child and Joseph Cradock the farmer, and that unnamed +Stratfordshire man, all found at night, all asphyxiated, had been choked by +vast swarms of moths. I don’t pretend even now that this is demonstrated, but +I’m sure it’s true. +</p> + +<p> +“Now suppose you encounter a swarm of these creatures in the dark. Suppose the +smaller ones fly up your nostrils. You will gasp for breath and open your +mouth. Then, suppose some hundreds of them fly into your mouth, into your +gullet, into your windpipe, what will happen to you? You will be dead in a very +short time, choked, asphyxiated.” +</p> + +<p> +“But the moths would be dead too. They would be found in the bodies.” +</p> + +<p> +“The moths? Do you know that it is extremely difficult to kill a moth with +cyanide of potassium? Take a frog, kill it, open its stomach. There you will +find its dinner of moths and small beetles, and the ‘dinner’ will shake itself +and walk off cheerily, to resume an entirely active existence. No; that is no +difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, now I came to this. I was shutting out all the other cases. I was +confining myself to those that came under the one formula. I got to the +assumption or conclusion, whichever you like, that certain people had been +asphyxiated by the action of moths. I had accounted for that extraordinary +appearance of burning or colored lights that I had witnessed myself, when I saw +the growth of that strange tree in my garden. That was clearly the cloud with +points of fire in it that the Stratfordshire man took for a new and terrible +kind of poison gas, that was the shiny something that poor little Johnnie +Roberts had seen over the stile, that was the glimmering light that had led +Mrs. Cradock to her husband’s dead body, that was the assemblage of terrible +eyes that had watched over Treff Loyne by night. Once on the right track I +understood all this, for coming into this room in the dark, I have been amazed +by the wonderful burning and the strange fiery colors of the eyes of a single +moth, as it crept up the pane of glass, outside. Imagine the effect of myriads +of such eyes, of the movement of these lights and fires in a vast swarm of +moths, each insect being in constant motion while it kept its place in the +mass: I felt that all this was clear and certain. +</p> + +<p> +“Then the next step. Of course, we know nothing really about moths; rather, we +know nothing of moth reality. For all I know there may be hundreds of books +which treat of moth and nothing but moth. But these are scientific books, and +science only deals with surfaces; it has nothing to do with realities—it +is impertinent if it attempts to do with realities. To take a very minor +matter; we don’t even know why the moth desires the flame. But we do know what +the moth does not do; it does not gather itself into swarms with the object of +destroying human life. But here, by the hypothesis, were cases in which the +moth had done this very thing; the moth race had entered, it seemed, into a +malignant conspiracy against the human race. It was quite impossible, no +doubt—that is to say, it had never happened before—but I could see +no escape from this conclusion. +</p> + +<p> +“These insects, then, were definitely hostile to man; and then I stopped, for I +could not see the next step, obvious though it seems to me now. I believe that +the soldiers’ scraps of talk on the way to Treff Loyne and back flung the next +plank over the gulf. They had spoken of ‘rat poison,’ of no rat being able to +spike a man through the heart; and then, suddenly, I saw my way clear. If the +moths were infected with hatred of men, and possessed the design and the power +of combining against him; why not suppose this hatred, this design, this power +shared by other non-human creatures. +</p> + +<p> +“The secret of the Terror might be condensed into a sentence: the animals had +revolted against men. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, the puzzle became easy enough; one had only to classify. Take the cases +of the people who met their deaths by falling over cliffs or over the edge of +quarries. We think of sheep as timid creatures, who always ran away. But +suppose sheep that don’t run away; and, after all, in reason why should they +run away? Quarry or no quarry, cliff or no cliff; what would happen to you if a +hundred sheep ran after you instead of running from you? There would be no help +for it; they would have you down and beat you to death or stifle you. Then +suppose man, woman, or child near a cliff’s edge or a quarry-side, and a sudden +rush of sheep. Clearly there is no help; there is nothing for it but to go +over. There can be no doubt that that is what happened in all these cases. +</p> + +<p> +“And again; you know the country and you know how a herd of cattle will +sometimes pursue people through the fields in a solemn, stolid sort of way. +They behave as if they wanted to close in on you. Townspeople sometimes get +frightened and scream and run; you or I would take no notice, or at the utmost, +wave our sticks at the herd, which will stop dead or lumber off. But suppose +they don’t lumber off. The mildest old cow, remember, is stronger than any man. +What can one man or half a dozen men do against half a hundred of these beasts +no longer restrained by that mysterious inhibition, which has made for ages the +strong the humble slaves of the weak? But if you are botanizing in the marsh, +like that poor fellow who was staying at Porth, and forty or fifty young cattle +gradually close round you, and refuse to move when you shout and wave your +stick, but get closer and closer instead, and get you into the slime. Again, +where is your help? If you haven’t got an automatic pistol, you must go down +and stay down, while the beasts lie quietly on you for five minutes. It was a +quicker death for poor Griffith of Treff Loyne—one of his own beasts +gored him to death with one sharp thrust of its horn into his heart. And from +that morning those within the house were closely besieged by their own cattle +and horses and sheep; and when those unhappy people within opened a window to +call for help or to catch a few drops of rain water to relieve their burning +thirst, the cloud waited for them with its myriad eyes of fire. Can you wonder +that Secretan’s statement reads in places like mania? You perceive the horrible +position of those people in Treff Loyne; not only did they see death advancing +on them, but advancing with incredible steps, as if one were to die not only in +nightmare but by nightmare. But no one in his wildest, most fiery dreams had +ever imagined such a fate. I am not astonished that Secretan at one moment +suspected the evidence of his own senses, at another surmised that the world’s +end had come.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how about the Williams’s who were murdered on the Highway near here?” +</p> + +<p> +“The horses were the murderers; the horses that afterwards stampeded the camp +below. By some means which is still obscure to me they lured that family into +the road and beat their brains out; their shod hoofs were the instruments of +execution. And, as for the <i>Mary Ann</i>, the boat that was capsized, I have +no doubt that it was overturned by a sudden rush of the porpoises that were +gamboling about in the water of Larnac Bay. A porpoise is a heavy +beast—half a dozen of them could easily upset a light rowing-boat. The +munition works? Their enemy was rats. I believe that it has been calculated +that in ‘greater London’ the number of rats is about equal to the number of +human beings, that is, there are about seven millions of them. The proportion +would be about the same in all the great centers of population; and the rat, +moreover, is, on occasion, migratory in its habits. You can understand now that +story of the <i>Semiramis</i>, beating about the mouth of the Thames, and at +last cast away by Arcachon, her only crew dry heaps of bones. The rat is an +expert boarder of ships. And so one can understand the tale told by the +frightened man who took the path by the wood that led up from the new munition +works. He thought he heard a thousand men treading softly through the wood and +chattering to one another in some horrible tongue; what he did hear was the +marshaling of an army of rats—their array before the battle. +</p> + +<p> +“And conceive the terror of such an attack. Even one rat in a fury is said to +be an ugly customer to meet; conceive then, the irruption of these terrible, +swarming myriads, rushing upon the helpless, unprepared, astonished workers in +the munition shops.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +There can be no doubt, I think, that Dr. Lewis was entirely justified in these +extraordinary conclusions. As I say, I had arrived at pretty much the same end, +by different ways; but this rather as to the general situation, while Lewis had +made his own particular study of those circumstances of the Terror that were +within his immediate purview, as a physician in large practice in the southern +part of Meirion. Of some of the cases which he reviewed he had, no doubt, no +immediate or first-hand knowledge; but he judged these instances by their +similarity to the facts which had come under his personal notice. He spoke of +the affairs of the quarry at Llanfihangel on the analogy of the people who were +found dead at the bottom of the cliffs near Porth, and he was no doubt +justified in doing so. He told me that, thinking the whole matter over, he was +hardly more astonished by the Terror in itself than by the strange way in which +he had arrived at his conclusions. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” he said, “those certain evidences of animal malevolence which we +knew of, the bees that stung the child to death, the trusted sheepdog’s turning +savage, and so forth. Well, I got no light whatever from all this; it suggested +nothing to me—simply because I had not got that ‘idea’ which Coleridge +rightly holds necessary in all inquiry; facts <i>qua</i> facts, as we said, +mean nothing and come to nothing. You do not believe, therefore you cannot see. +</p> + +<p> +“And then, when the truth at last appeared it was through the whimsical +‘coincidence,’ as we call such signs, of the moth in my lamp and the moth on +the dead child’s forehead. This, I think, is very extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +“And there seems to have been one beast that remained faithful; the dog at +Treff Loyne. That is strange.” +</p> + +<p> +“That remains a mystery.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It would not be wise, even now, to describe too closely the terrible scenes +that were to be seen in the munition areas of the north and the midlands during +the black months of the Terror. Out of the factories issued at black midnight +the shrouded dead in their coffins, and their very kinsfolk did not know how +they had come by their deaths. All the towns were full of houses of mourning, +were full of dark and terrible rumors; incredible, as the incredible reality. +There were things done and suffered that perhaps never will be brought to +light, memories and secret traditions of these things will be whispered in +families, delivered from father to son, growing wilder with the passage of the +years, but never growing wilder than the truth. +</p> + +<p> +It is enough to say that the cause of the Allies was for awhile in deadly +peril. The men at the front called in their extremity for guns and shells. No +one told them what was happening in the places where these munitions were made. +</p> + +<p> +At first the position was nothing less than desperate; men in high places were +almost ready to cry “mercy” to the enemy. But, after the first panic, measures +were taken such as those described by Merritt in his account of the matter. The +workers were armed with special weapons, guards were mounted, machine-guns were +placed in position, bombs and liquid flame were ready against the obscene +hordes of the enemy, and the “burning clouds” found a fire fiercer than their +own. Many deaths occurred amongst the airmen; but they, too, were given special +guns, arms that scattered shot broadcast, and so drove away the dark flights +that threatened the airplanes. +</p> + +<p> +And, then, in the winter of 1915-16, the Terror ended suddenly as it had begun. +Once more a sheep was a frightened beast that ran instinctively from a little +child; the cattle were again solemn, stupid creatures, void of harm; the spirit +and the convention of malignant design passed out of the hearts of all the +animals. The chains that they had cast off for awhile were thrown again about +them. +</p> + +<p> +And, finally, there comes the inevitable “why?” Why did the beasts who had been +humbly and patiently subject to man, or affrighted by his presence, suddenly +know their strength and learn how to league together, and declare bitter war +against their ancient master? +</p> + +<p> +It is a most difficult and obscure question. I give what explanation I have to +give with very great diffidence, and an eminent disposition to be corrected, if +a clearer light can be found. +</p> + +<p> +Some friends of mine, for whose judgment I have very great respect, are +inclined to think that there was a certain contagion of hate. They hold that +the fury of the whole world at war, the great passion of death that seems +driving all humanity to destruction, infected at last these lower creatures, +and in place of their native instinct of submission, gave them rage and wrath +and ravening. +</p> + +<p> +This may be the explanation. I cannot say that it is not so, because I do not +profess to understand the working of the universe. But I confess that the +theory strikes me as fanciful. There may be a contagion of hate as there is a +contagion of smallpox; I do not know, but I hardly believe it. +</p> + +<p> +In my opinion, and it is only an opinion, the source of the great revolt of the +beasts is to be sought in a much subtler region of inquiry. I believe that the +subjects revolted because the king abdicated. Man has dominated the beasts +throughout the ages, the spiritual has reigned over the rational through the +peculiar quality and grace of spirituality that men possess, that makes a man +to be that which he is. And when he maintained this power and grace, I think it +is pretty clear that between him and the animals there was a certain treaty and +alliance. There was supremacy on the one hand, and submission on the other; but +at the same time there was between the two that cordiality which exists between +lords and subjects in a well-organized state. I know a socialist who maintains +that Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” give a picture of true democracy. I do not +know about that, but I see that knight and miller were able to get on quite +pleasantly together, just because the knight knew that he was a knight and the +miller knew that he was a miller. If the knight had had conscientious +objections to his knightly grade, while the miller saw no reason why he should +not be a knight, I am sure that their intercourse would have been difficult, +unpleasant, and perhaps murderous. +</p> + +<p> +So with man. I believe in the strength and truth of tradition. A learned man +said to me a few weeks ago: “When I have to choose between the evidence of +tradition and the evidence of a document, I always believe the evidence of +tradition. Documents may be falsified, and often are falsified; tradition is +never falsified.” This is true; and, therefore, I think, one may put trust in +the vast body of folklore which asserts that there was once a worthy and +friendly alliance between man and the beasts. Our popular tale of Dick +Whittington and his Cat no doubt represents the adaptation of a very ancient +legend to a comparatively modern personage, but we may go back into the ages +and find the popular tradition asserting that not only are the animals the +subjects, but also the friends of man. +</p> + +<p> +All that was in virtue of that singular spiritual element in man which the +rational animals do not possess. Spiritual does not mean respectable, it does +not even mean moral, it does not mean “good” in the ordinary acceptation of the +word. It signifies the royal prerogative of man, differentiating him from the +beasts. +</p> + +<p> +For long ages he has been putting off this royal robe, he has been wiping the +balm of consecration from his own breast. He has declared, again and again, +that he is not spiritual, but rational, that is, the equal of the beasts over +whom he was once sovereign. He has vowed that he is not Orpheus but Caliban. +</p> + +<p> +But the beasts also have within them something which corresponds to the +spiritual quality in men—we are content to call it instinct. They +perceived that the throne was vacant—not even friendship was possible +between them and the self-deposed monarch. If he were not king he was a sham, +an imposter, a thing to be destroyed. +</p> + +<p> +Hence, I think, the Terror. They have risen once—they may rise again. +</p> + +<p> +THE END +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TERROR ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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